


Settled into Heart and Soul

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Background Established Kamet/Costis, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Costis is a Good Bean, Doctor Irene, F/M, Gen, Gen Plz Stop, Gen you disaster, Grad Student Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Relationship, Sassy Kamet, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, what is this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “Kamet. I do not need a roommate nearly as badly as you apparently need Eugenides off of your couch.”Kamet heaved a sigh, “It was worth a try. Just…consider it. Gen isn’t terrible. He’s just…a bit much.”Irene took a few more measured bites of toast in response. Considering it. Preposterous.Somehow, five days later, Eugenides Eddisian moved into her spare room. Irene isn’t entirely certain if this is the moment she lost control of her life, but there’s a good chance it might be.





	1. Fly Headfirst Into Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahaha, what IS THIS? This is actually part one of a fic I started writing back in December of last year, then dropped for a while because IT TURNED INTO A MASSIVE MONSTER FIC and I lost the energy to continue it for a while. I think this first half here stands alone preeeeetty well, and a dear friend of mine is sick and I offered some Irenides to soothe the soul. 
> 
> If you haven't read 'The Queen's Thief' series by Meghan Whalen Turner WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GO READ IT NOW, but if you don't want to click away just yet, no, you don't really need to have read it to enjoy this story. It's so AU it's painful. 
> 
> One trigger warning, past non-con/dub-con situation is mentioned in reference to one of Irene's previous (negative) relationships, but it's vague and definitely in the past. It's pretty easy to skip if you want to jump past that part. Basically Irene tells Gen some stuff from her past and he is a good comforting friend and there are cuddles and it's sweet, but the past is not.

 

            Irene Attolia would like it known, regardless of what her roommate says; she does not hate Christmas. She…tolerates Christmas. She accepts the holiday season as one of life’s little inevitablities. Like flu season. Or taxes.

            Except tax season doesn’t come with a hospital full of coworkers all asking what her plans are or if she’s visiting family. And sniffles send you home during flu season. Holiday spirit, on the other hand, is only encouraged.

            Her roommate is no help.

            She got the magnetic whiteboard on their fridge back when Gen was just the guy she hired to take care of her cat and she needed a place to leave him notes.  Now it’s the place her now-roommate (she questions her life choices constantly, _constantly_ ) leaves her stupid doodles that definitely do not make her smile after a long day of cutting people open and sewing them shut again. (She’s been told that referring to her job in such blunt terms makes her sound like Doctor Frankenstein and it’s ‘disturbing’. She has taken this assessment under advisement and has changed absolutely nothing about her language choices accordingly.)

            But on the first day of December, right where she writes the date every morning, he had erased her tidy handwriting and replaced her neat ‘December’ with a scrawled ‘Christmas’ so the whiteboard read ‘Christmas 1st’. Below was the usual daily doodle, this one an unusually detailed gaggle of woodland creatures gathered around a festive pine tree.

            Irene promptly erased the mutilated date and rewrote it – correctly this time.  She let the cartoon creatures stay, though. They were endearing in their own way.

Unfortunately, this leniency seemed to only encourage her roommate.

A note on Irene’s living situation, it is indirectly Kamet’s – her favorite employee at the diner across the street from the hospital – fault. In that it was Kamet’s boyfriend who recommended Gen as a pet minder in the first place when Irene began picking up extra shifts and spending more and more time away from her apartment, unable to feed and water her cat. And it was Kamet who sat down uninvited in her booth three months previously and said “You have to get Eugenides off of my couch.” 

“I was unaware Eugenides was on your couch. Or that I had invited you to sit with me,” she’d replied, raising a cool eyebrow and smothering the impulse to smile welcomingly at the intruder.

“We’re friends,” Kamet had said brusquely, “You know I’m not a server, waiting this table is emphatically not my job. I should be in the back making sure Laela doesn’t over-order us into bankruptcy and yet, here we are.” 

“And here I thought you simply enjoyed ferrying food back and forth.”

“Ah yes, transporting edibles is my life’s calling,” he quirked a smile and she relaxed enough to give him a small smile in return.

“Hello, Kamet.”

“Hello, Dr. Irene.” 

“It’s Irene or Dr. Attolia.”

“As you like,” he waved his hand vaguely, “Back to the matter at hand.”

“Apparently my cat-sitter is on your couch?”

“Apparently my boyfriend neglected to mention he was bringing his best friend with him when he moved in,” Kamet gives her a long-suffering look, “He was supposed to find his own place. Weeks ago.” 

“And he didn’t?”

“Oh, he did. Our couch,” Kamet sighed, burying his face in his hands, shoving his glasses into his hair, “I need him gone, Irene. I want to have sex on that couch, with my super-hot fireman boyfriend.” 

“And Eugenides sleeping there precludes that?” she asked archly, biting down on a laugh.

Kamet peered at her through his fingers, “You are an evil, evil woman.” 

She allowed herself a snicker at the look on his face. “I’m not sure how this is my problem.” 

“You have an extra bedroom.”

She sat bolt upright, amusement forgotten, “ _Kamet._ I’m not a halfway house!”

            “He has money! He can pay rent!”

            “ _Kamet,_ ” she hissed.

            “Please, _please._ You know him, you like him!”

            “I know he takes good care of my _cat_ and leaves me stupid doodles on my whiteboard and hasn’t stolen my television yet.” 

            Kamet spread his hands as if to say ‘all you need to know about a person before allowing them into your home on a permanent basis’.

            “No,” she jabbed a finger in his general direction.

            “You told Relius…”

            Irene thanked years of having posh charm school etiquette beaten into her skull that she didn’t faceplant directly into the table at that. “I told Relius nothing.”

            “You told Relius that you were making friends outside of work.”

            “I am, I have, we’re friends!”  
            He pressed his lips together and frowned at her judgmentally at her in an uncanny imitation of one of her own expressions, “You told him you were getting a roommate and working on work/life balance.”

            “General Antiope is an excellent roommate and my life is very balanced.”

            Kamet’s eyebrows made for his hairline, “General Antiope is a _cat_ that you don’t even have to time _feed yourself_ because you’re always at the hospital. You gave a strange man cash money and keys to your apartment rather than cut back on your work hours.”

            “On your recommendation,” she pointed out.

            “I could have been lying. He could have been a felon. He might be a felon. I haven’t checked,” he said haughtily.

            “ _Kamet_.”

            “Friends lie to each other sometimes. Apparently you lie to your therapist.”

            Irene drew in a deep breath through her nose and focused on cutting her toast into tiny pieces.

            “You are the only person on the planet I’ve ever seen cut their toast into pieces and dip it in jelly,” Kamet observed.

            As Irene was not quite ready to speak to Kamet without shouting, she cut three more pieces of toast, soaked them in raspberry jelly and popped them neatly in her mouth one by one.  Toast chewed and swallowed, she turned her attention back to her traitor friend.

            “Kamet. I do not need a roommate nearly as badly as you apparently need Eugenides off of your couch.”

            Kamet heaved a sigh, “It was worth a try. Just…consider it. Gen isn’t _terrible._ He’s just…a bit much.” 

            “What a ringing endorsement.”

            “Eugenides defies explanation,” he observed flatly, “Remember. Consider it. It could be good for you to come home to another human being.”

            Irene took a few more measured bites of toast in response. Considering it. Preposterous. 

            Somehow, five days later, Eugenides Eddisian moved into her spare room. Irene isn’t entirely certain if this is the moment she lost control of her life, but there’s a good chance it might be.

…

            The thing about Eugenides is, he’s not a bad roommate. Considering how much Kamet desperately wanted him off his couch, Irene assumed Gen would be around constantly, always underfoot. But she hasn’t actually seen him in person in several weeks. If he didn’t keep drinking her almond milk and replacing it with the wrong brand (yes, there is a difference between Almond Breeze and Kirkland, _Eugenides,_ the Costco brand is _better_ ) she would almost suspect he’d never moved in at all.

            Except.

            Christmas has begun a slow infiltration of her home starting the day after Thanksgiving and the arrival of December 1sthas only opened the tinsel floodgates.

            (Irene doesn’t know what Gen did for Thanksgiving, she had three appendectomies and open heart surgery on her docket at work and couldn’t be bothered to check in with her phantom housemate until the day after, when she trudged in at 2pm, bag of microwave meals in hand, to an empty apartment and an irate General Antiope.)

            It started with the doodles and now it’s snowman fridge magnets and tinsel thrown haphazardly over her microwave and a plush stocking-capped polar bear holding a pillow saying ‘Have a Beary Merry Christmas’ sitting on her couch.

            She takes a picture of the bear plushie and sends it to Gen. She does not use Snapchat because she is a surgeon, goddammit, not a middle-schooler.

**Irene:**

What is this doing here?

**Eugenides:**

It’s wishing you a beary merry Christmas

            What follows is a string of incomprehensible yuletide emojis and Irene is tempted to ask him to hand his phone over to the nearest person over the age of thirty just so she can talk to a sane human being using actual words. Not that she herself is over the age of thirty either, sometimes she just feels fifty years removed from the people around her. 

**Irene:**

It can’t stay here

**Eugenides:**

But its natural habitat is melting

Global warming is real, Irene

Give a homeless bear a chance

            More emojis. Irene wonders if Gen knows he texts like a twelve year old. Probably. There has to have been someone in his life before her to be baffled by his apparent reliance on hieroglyphic communication.

**Irene:**

If the bear stays the tinsel goes

**Eugenides:**

But I finally found a place G.A. wouldn’t eat it!

**Irene:**

Tinsel. Or. Bear.

**Eugenides:**

Do you not celebrate Christmas?

If the stuff is bothering you say the word

I’ll take it down

I don’t wanna force Christmas on you

If you don’t celebrate

Irene doesn’t actually know how to answer that. She isn’t religiously opposed to Christmas. She used to celebrate it as a child. Her mother would put her in an pretty dress with lots of skirt and very little freedom of motion and she and her brother in their shiny new dress shoes would be trotted out in front of all her father’s starched and pressed business associates and their sparkling, botoxed second and third wives. There would be champagne for the adults and sparkling cider for the children, of whom there would be very few and all the Christmas trees would be custom decorated by a design team that cost a fortune and the next year Irene would see all the same people and none of the same decorations because he mother would have moved on to a new aesthetic by then.

            She and her brother opened presents with their nanny on Christmas morning and sat through a stiff dinner with their parents Christmas night and that was it.

            After her mother died the parties got even more impersonal and the dresses even more restrictive and her father’s business associates started eyeing her like a side of veal.

            Medical school meant freedom from a lot of things for Irene Attolia, including, but not limited to Obligation Christmas. 

**Irene:**

I’m not opposed to Christmas

**Eugenides:**

Nice non-answer, senator :)

Seriously, it’s no problem

I can take my shit down

**Irene:**

Keep the bear

I don’t mind

**Eugenides:**

I don’t wanna offend you

If you don’t do Christmas, that’s ok

I can keep it in my room

**Irene:**

I used to do Christmas

Not so much now

I’m not opposed

Theoretically.

**Eugenides:**

Do I sense a Tragic Backstory™?

**Irene:**

Go back to whatever you do

**Eugenides:**

Are we not at that point in our friendship yet?

**Irene:**

What point?

What friendship?

**Eugenides:**

You wound me.

We are so friends.

And the Tragic Backstory™ sharing point, of course

See, I’ll demonstrate

I am terrified of mall Santas

Pathologically

It’s a real problem

            Irene chokes on an involuntary laugh. “What?” she hears herself saying out loud, shaking her head at her phone.

**Irene:**

What?

Why?  
What did a mall Santa do to you?

**Eugenides:**

Long story short, my brother is evil

**Irene:**

Oh I need more than that now

You’ve gotten me curious

**Eugenides:**

He told me if I hid in the presents at the mall display

I’d get to go to the North Pole

I actually just ended up getting stuck in a wooden sleigh

The mall closed, I panicked

The mall Santa found me

when the pile of presents started shaking

We scared the hell out of each other

He chased me all the way to the exit

I threw a nutcracker at his head

I almost got arrested

I thought my dad’s head was going to explode

And that’s why Temenus is no longer allowed to babysit

**Irene:**

Wow, intense

**Eugenides:**

Tem is five years older than me.

I was 7.

He was 12.

I got him back, though

And that’s what matters

**Irene:**

Obviously not getting over it in a mature

And healthy manner

**Eugenides:**

Nope.

I’m all about petty vengeance.

**Irene:**

Of course

**Eugenides:**

Of course

I actually do have to go

Final answer, bear stays or goes?

**Irene:**

Bear stays,

Tinsel goes

**Eugenides:**

Oh, cruel, heartless woman

I’ll take it down when I get home

            Irene resists the urge to say ‘thank you’ or something else equally inane. The conversation is over; she’s gotten what she wanted. She doesn’t need to keep chatting with Gen for no reason. Whatever he and his mall Santa story say, they are not friends. 

…

            “How’s sex on the couch?” Irene asks Kamet the next time she sees him just to see him turn brick red and choke on his coffee.

            “I hate you.”

            “I hope it’s good because there’s a polar bear on my couch and it’s indirectly your fault.”

            “I don’t know if I hope that’s a euphemism or not,” Kamet sighs.

            Irene takes pity on him. “Gen’s gotten into Christmas.”

            “Already? It’s December 3rd.”

            She shows him the photo on her phone. The bear has not gotten any less fluffy, festive or adorable.

            Kamet makes a sound of acknowledgement that could be anything from an ‘aww’ to a dismissive grunt.

            “Do you celebrate Christmas?” she asks, withdrawing hand and phone.

            He shrugs, “I grew up roughly atheist. I celebrated whatever my foster family celebrated. Now I’m with Costis.”

            “And let me guess, he celebrates Christmas?”

            Kamet gives her a flat look, “Like jolly St. Nick himself. It’s…” an awkward, pleased shrug, “Sweet. Endearing.” 

            Irene can’t help but smile slightly at that. They really are a good couple. Costis may not be her type – too earnest, heartfelt and sincere – but he is undeniably good for Kamet.

            “I wouldn’t worry about the Christmas craze much the next few weeks, though. Gen’ll be distracted.”

            “With what?” she frowns at him, momentarily caught off gaurd.

            He blinks, “Finals week, of course.”

            Finals week?

…

**Irene:**

You’re in grad school?

**Eugenides:**

Yes?

Did you not know what I do with the majority of my time?

**Irene:**

I assumed one of the million part-time jobs

You listed on your rental paperwork

**Eugenides:**

You mean the sticky-note I left you?

When you demanded to know if I could afford

The heavily discounted sublet for your spare bedroom?

**Irene:**

Yes.

**Eugenides:**

Ok.

I’ll leave you another sticky note

With all my degrees on it

Will that make you happy?

            Irene decides to bow out of this conversation as gracefully as she can manage and just not reply.

…

            Eugenides is getting two masters’ degrees, one in classics and the other in history. His thesis is on ancient storytelling and the transition from oral tradition to written texts and associated translation errors. Irene learns this when she comes home from work to see her roommate keeled over, sound asleep on the living room floor, surrounded by a dozen open books, General Antiope napping on a pile of loose notebook paper, his laptop in sleep mode but still playing ‘Twist of Fate’ by Olivia Newton John of all things. (She finds out later that Gen listens to the Stranger Things season 2 soundtrack on Spotify when he’s trying to power through a paper because Gen is some kind of human Buzzfeed article.)

            Gen looks…sweet when he’s asleep, Irene decides. His sharp features aren’t any less angular but in sleep the lines of his face relax enough that without his quicksilver wit dancing across them you can see how young he really is. (Irene isn’t much older, really, but 23 feels an ocean away instead of a few years sometimes). His messy black hair is escaping the stubby ponytail he’d yanked it into and the pencils he stuck in the rat’s nest are falling out. Dark circles, bruise-purple against his brown skin, curve under his eyes and she fights the urge to smooth his hair out of his face like one would for a sleeping child.

            She doesn’t expect to feel so fond of Gen, looking at him curled in a ball on the floor. She should be annoyed. It’s been a long day both in the operating room and out, her feet are sore and there’s snow melting in her hair, cold water trickling down her spine and she had been looking forward to an empty apartment and a bathtub full of bubbles and a paperback novel.

            She watches him instead, unsure what to do. Does she wake him up? Does she put away his books for him?

            General Antiope is watching her judgmentally and Irene can’t even blame her. She’s a surgeon. She makes snap decisions that save lives daily. And she’s paralyzed by the unexpectedly sweet face of her roommate (who probably hasn’t showered in days, judging by the way his hair sticks up in greasy points) passed out on the floor.

            That’s enough to shake her out of her daze. With a sigh, Irene pulls off her work shoes (tv doctors might get to prance around in pumps, Irene wears sneakers like any other person stuck standing for long hours in tense conditions), drops her purse on the breakfast bar and makes her way over to the human lump on her carpet. 

            “Gen,” she shakes his shoulder gently, “Eugenides. Wake up.” 

            He comes awake with a choked sound, like she’s startled him and she pulls back sharply. For a long moment they stare at each other, sizing each other up, feeling out the edges of the moment.

            Then his face scrunches up, brows drawing together, “Irene? What time is it?” 

            “Late,” she says.

            He yawns, peeling himself off the rug, rubbing at the cheek now wearing the pattern of the carpet. He looks like a child, not a 23-year-old man, sitting cross-legged on the floor, rubbing his cheek with the back of his hand and squinting his eyes sleepily.

            Giving his head one last shake, he yawns magnificently and sighs, “I didn’t get as much done as I wanted.” 

            “Have you had anything to eat today?” Irene blurts out, unsure what else to say, but suddenly very worried he hasn’t been taking care of himself (she really doesn’t have room to judge, most of her meals come from the hospital cafeteria or Kamet’s diner.)

            “Um. I think I had some Cheetos and a Red Bull around nine am?” he frowns, “That’s not good.” 

            “No, it’s not.” Irene should know; she’s a medical professional.

            A long silence as Gen re-acclimates to the waking world and then, “I want pancakes.”

            He wants pancakes. What an infant. “I’m not going to make you pancakes.”

            “I never said you were making me pancakes, I said I wanted them. With chocolate chips. And bacon.”

            “Together?”

            He stares at her like she’s from another planet, “Yes, I’m going to put bacon bits in with the chocolate chips in the pancake batter.”

            “Are you being sarcastic?” She really can’t tell.

            “Maybe,” a cheeky grin, “You’ll have to find out,” he says grandly as he swings himself to his feet, suddenly full of energy she could have sworn he didn’t have a minute ago.

            She follows him into the kitchen because apparently she has a soft spot for the deranged. And she wants to know what he’s going to do to these pancakes.

            “But first,” Eugenides pulls out a pair of mismatched coffee mugs Irene does not remember owning with a flourish, “Poor man’s mochas.”

            “What?”

            “With peppermint!” 

            Irene watches, dumbfounded as Gen sets a pot of coffee to brew, then dumps a heaping scoop of powdered hot chocolate mix into each mug. Coffee prepared, he tops off the mugs, not with water, but with steaming hot coffee. Pulling out a pair of candy canes from her silverware drawer of all places, he garnishes each concoction with a peppermint stick and gives the sludge a swirl. He spins around, a mug in each hand, and a ridiculous grin on his face.

            “What did I just watch you make?” Irene asks.

            “Poor man’s mochas,” Gen says breezily, “Do you want whiskey in yours? Or mashmallows?” 

            Irene is still staring at him like he’s escaped from the zoo.

            “I’m putting both in mine,” he informs her when no response manages to work it’s way past her lips.

            “Sure,” she finally manages, “Add some whiskey.” It really couldn’t make the drink any worse.

            “Any objections to marshmallows?”

            “No,” she hazards.

            “Excellent, I stocked up before finals week. I think I ate a whole bag at 2am last night. My memory’s a little hazy.” 

            Irene doesn’t know how to express her concern at that statement so she takes a sip of her freshly spiked and marshmallow-ed beverage. It’s…not terrible, actually. Her surprise must register on her face because Gen wiggles his eyebrows above the rim of his mug. It’s blue and says ‘I Can’t Adult Today’ which seems to be an accurate summation of his entire existence. Hers says ‘I Whale Always Love You’ with a cartoon whale in place of the word, which is an accurate summation of exactly nothing in her life.

            “Pretty good, right?” Gen prompts, grinning like he can read her mind.

            “It’s an experience.”

            “I’ll take it,” he smiles like she actually complimented him and starts getting out the ingredients for pancakes, “Did you know, you can make pancakes in a mug in a microwave? I did it once, in undergrad. Costis said I couldn’t do it.” 

            Irene will soon learn a great deal of Gen’s stories begin with ‘Costis said I couldn’t do it’ and end with ‘so I did it and that’s how I almost got arrested/punched in the face/was banned from McDonald’s’.

            “Did it work?”

            “Yeah!” Gen grins at her, dark eyes crinkling with mirth, “But we were really drunk when I tried it and we used a Styrofoam cup and it caught on fire and the microwave exploded a little. The fire department got called, they evacuated our dorm, Costis was mad.”

            “I can imagine,” Irene says dryly.

            Gen waves away her support of Costis’ irritation, “He was just pissed I was way underage and he had to pretend I had the flu and wasn’t drunk as hell when I threw up in the bushes.”

            Of course he was. Irene wonders what it must be like to have this kind of undergraduate memories. She doesn’t, she wasn’t the kind for drunken shenanigans. She didn’t have the time or the friends for it. She entered the best accelerated BS/MD program she could, drowned herself in work and didn’t look much further than her four walls and a future making money for herself and not her father’s company.

            A cry of joy interrupts her thoughts. “Cool Whip! I knew I bought some!” 

            She’s living with an infant.

            An infant, she discovers, who does indeed put bacon bits in with the chocolate chips in his pancakes.

            “I hadn’t thought of it until you suggested it.”

            Irene crunches her way through her pancake and tries to decide if they taste good.

            Gen licks whipped cream off his nose and seems spectacularly unbothered by anything.   

…

            The pancake night seems to have fundamentally shifted her relationship with Gen in ways she can’t quantify. When before she felt like she was always looking at the spaces where he wasn’t, suddenly it’s as if she can’t un-see him.  His mugs, (mismatched, chipped and full of ‘personality’ her own identical set of six white porcelain cups decidedly lack) in the dish drain, his thrift store leather jacket tossed carelessly over the back of a chair, his books on the dining room table, his nest of Irene’s color-coordinated throw pillows on the living room floor, topped off with the most garish crochet blanket she’s ever seen. It has glittery yarn in places. Glittery. Yarn. It doesn’t shed tinsel or she’d ban it on account of General Antiope’s need to chew on anything remotely sparkly.

            Even when Gen isn’t home (which is often) he’s _everywhere._ Inescapable.

            Irene isn’t sure how she feels about it.  She doesn’t know what to do about the little surge of hope she feels when she opens the door. What does she hope for? That he’s home? That he isn’t?

            She doesn’t know and it makes her uneasy.

            Something else has changed too – Gen _notices things._ He’s started leaving paper bags with her name on them in the fridge every morning. Opening them she finds meticulously packed lunches just for her. Albeit, they are meticulously packed lunches that would be more at home on a school bus than in a hospital, but she’ll take carrot sticks and a peanut butter and nutella sandwich over cafeteria food any day. (He leaves notes too, like a soccer mom; they range from knock-knock jokes to existential questions Irene is afraid to ask about in case they’re jokes too and she just doesn’t get it.)

            Example: Why did the Romans not go to Greece to dinner?

            Answer: They heard it was full of Thebes (say it like ‘thieves’!)

            Eugenides’ world-class wit at work.

            (Irene read the sticky-note, didn’t get it, read it again out loud and choked on a laugh that had the interns shooting her frightened looks like the apocalypse might just be nigh.)

            It’s like a switch has flipped. Where before Gen existed on the edges of her life, like crust on a sandwich (he cuts the crusts off too, and sometime uses Christmas-themed cookie cutters to do it. He really is a soccer mom deep down, she wonders if he used to pack Kamet and Costis lunches when he lived with them) now he’s everywhere. And she doesn’t actually mind. Which is probably the most stressful thing about the whole situation. Irene is anxious about how not-anxious she is about Gen’s casual invasion of her life.

            It’s a bit of a mind-fuck.

            “Is he always like this?” she asks Kamet, plunking down today’s lunch.

            “I’m going to default to yes. Whatever he’s doing. Yes. The answer is yes.”

            “He’s doing,” she waves vaguely, gets frustrated and just digs out today’s note and holds it out, “This?”  The handwriting is more manic than usual and reads: ‘Did Carthage reallyneed to be destroyed? DID IT??? Chill the fuck out, Cato the Elder!’

            “It was a knock-knock joke yesterday,” Irene says flatly as Kamet squints at the note, “I think he’s losing his mind. Or I am. I can’t tell anymore.” 

            “Both. The answer is both. He has that affect on people.”

            She sighs and buries her face in her hands. “And to top it off, I think I like it.” 

            “Now that sounds like a personal problem to me.”

            “Shut up, Kamet.”

            So her relationship with her roommate isn’t going downhill so much as took a sharp left turn into uncharted territory and Irene is entirely without a roadmap.

            It is what it is.

…

            Irene gets a headcold around the end of Gen’s finals week. She knows this because she’s sniffling on the couch, clutching a box of tissues, resenting not being able to work, when Gen bursts through the front door, vaults over the back of the couch, and sprawls across the length of it, mildly surprised but apparently unbothered by the way he ends up mostly in her lap.

            “I’m free!” he shouts all the way across the room, “I’m free, I’m free, I’m – ” cue the couch-vaulting and subsequent crash-landing into Irene’s lap “I’m free,” he says at a conversational volume.

            Irene sneezes in his face because he knocked her tissues off the couch when he jumped on it.

            Gen’s whole face scrunches up, “Oh my _god_ , what did you do? Gross, germs, infection, get it _off_ ,” he whines, scrubbing at his face with his sleeve. “You are gross and definitely have cooties,” he informs her mock-seriously, squinting at her accusingly over his sleeve.

            “I’m sick, what did you expect?” she says around stuffed-up sinuses, reaching for the tissue box, now on its side on the floor.

            He rolls off her lap, surprisingly cat-like, landing on the floor with unusual grace, and hands the box up to her, resettling cross-legged at her feet. “And you’re what? Sitting in the living room marinating in your own misery?” 

            Irene blows her nose instead of replying because that’s a very melodramatic but not entirely false assessment of what she’s doing.

            Gen must be a mind-reader because he’s staring at her with a tragic look on his face, “No, that’s not how you do it at _all_!” 

            “There’s a right way to be sick?”

            “ _Yes_!” he says emphatically, “You bury yourself in blankets and watch sappy romantic comedies or British baking shows or anime and you eat a bunch of soup and let yourself feel really, really dramatically sorry for yourself until you feel better. And if you’re lucky in a few days, after you’ve had a good fluffy sulk you feel good again and everything is beautiful because you’ve come back to life!”

            Irene stares at him because her head is full of snot and she really can’t muster up a response to this. She just sniffles again, a cough tearing its way out of her chest while she’s at it.

            Gen sighs in her general direction. “Okay, move.” 

            Irene isn’t sure where he wants her to move to so she just settles more firmly in place against the couch’s armrest. That seems to suit Gen just fine because all he does is surround her with pillows until she’s sitting nestled in a surprisingly comfortable pile. He frowns at the set-up when he’s finished, though, and vanishes into his room. Irene clutches her tissue box and frowns at nothing, trying to will her illness away as she does most small health annoyances.

            It doesn’t work, but Gen does return, carrying the horrible crochet blanket in his arms.  He wraps her in it, tucking in the edges around her shoulders in the pillow nest. It is quite possibly the softest thing she’s ever come into contact with, even with the patches of sparkly yarn and horrifying neon color scheme. 

            “My cousin’s boyfriend taught himself how to crochet,” Gen explains, “He’s not very good at it yet.” 

            Irene files that information away on the off chance it ever comes in handy in the future. Gen has at least one cousin. Who has a boyfriend, who happens to crochet and either likes or hates Eugenides Eddisian enough to give him this delightfully soft monstrosity of a blanket.

            “This was the first thing he made,” Gen explains, “And he either really likes me or Helen really hates me because they gave it to me.” 

            “It does seem like your taste,” Irene observes dryly.

            “Charming and eccentric?”

            “Garish and excessive.” 

            He grins at her and winks, “Always.”

            Why is this brat so damn charming?

            “Now,” Irene’s fever must have spiked again because she could have sworn the tv remote was across the room and not in Gen’s hand, “any fluffy television preferences?” 

            Irene shakes her head and immediately regrets it when everything trapped in her sinuses _shifts_ , suddenly and painfully. “No.”

            “What do you normally watch?”

            Irene has to search her memory for an embarrassingly long moment before she remembers the last thing she watched. An HBO documentary about a serial killer, she thinks. She’s not going to tell Gen that because, well, she’s pretty sure hearing that from your roommate you don’t know particularly well who also happens to be a surgeon is not exactly comforting. “Documentaries,” she says neutrally instead. 

            “Okay,” he prompts, “Any old favorites?” His eyes are so dark and warm. Like a cup of coffee in the middle of a long day, just when you need it most – and oh, god is she _high_?  Did the Dayquil do this to her? 

            She shakes her head.

            To his credit (maybe _he’s_ high, maybe the crushing weight of two master’s degrees has shot his brain to hell) he just smiles at her and says “Ken Burns’ _Civil War_ it is.” 

            She falls asleep before the union even declares war.

…

            She wakes up to realize three things: one, she’s tipped over and her head is on Gen’s shoulder, two, he’s switched the tv over to the Hallmark channel and is watching a very G-rated cliché-fest of a holiday romance movie, three, her life is looking a little bit like a Hallmark movie’s vodka aunt and she doesn’t mind at this exact moment.

            General Antiope is a purring furry lump on her feet; Gen is humming softly under his breath along with whatever knockoff Christmas carol is underscoring the film.

            She’s warm. It might be the fever. Definitely.

…

            It turns out, Gen’s finals might be over, but his teacher assistant duties aren’t done until the final grades are in. Which means she gets to sniffle through the last throws of her cold watching Gen grade papers and bitch about undergrads. The Hallmark channel is playing another pleasantly predictable holiday romance in the background and Gen is sitting, leaning against the couch’s other armrest, toes digging into Irene’s leg, whining.

            “Have they ever heard of a semi-colon? Breaks up a sentence, way better than stupid dashes? What does a dash even do? Nothing! It’s an aesthetically pleasing horizontal line.” 

            “A hyphen – ” she offers.

            He sighs melodramatically and lets the paper fall on his face, “Allows students to use up just that much more paper space when they have _absolutely nothing to say_?” 

            She raises an eyebrow at him. He lifts the paper off his face and raises an eyebrow right back at her. “God save me from freshmen taking gen ed classes.” 

            Gen ed. ‘Gen’ ed. Gen. Ed. It’s the cold medicine; it’s definitely the cold medicine that starts her laughing until she topples into another coughing fit.  Definitely. No doubt about it.

            “What?” Gen stares at her like she’s broken, like he’s broken her and he doesn’t even know how, “What?” he rolls up the offending paper and pokes her with it, “What-what-what-WHAT?” 

            She waves at him, “Gen ed.  Gen. Ed.” 

            He stares at her, perplexed as she only laughs harder. There are actual tears streaming down her face. She’s sitting in her living room, surrounded by tissues and blankets and her couch is practically a pillow fort and her roommate, this beautiful, ridiculous boy of a man, is staring at her like she’s nothing he’s ever seen before in his life. 

            Life is beautiful.

            She coughs up a lung when the fit is over but it almost feels worth it to hear Gen say “ _What?”_ in the most dramatic, put-upon voice she’s ever heard.

…

            Irene recovers enough to return to work just in time to be reminded of the annual Secret Santa gift exchange (which she will refuse to participate in for the third year in a row), and the Christmas charity ball. She is excited about neither of these events.

            The charity ball and silent auction is the sort of thing the hospital board always buys a table at and then struggles to fill at the last minute. One of the charities involved was one of her mother’s favorites. So, caught in a strange tangle of imagined family obligation, misplaced nostalgia, and the feeling that maybe, maybe she could really know her mother if only… Irene has found herself donning a sparkling, overpriced dress and attending every year.

            She shoulders open the apartment door, weighed down by bags of optimistically purchased groceries (because she always thinks she’ll have time to cook a pound of chicken breast gradually over the course of many healthy meals but really she just ends up stir-frying it with all the wilting vegetables in a panic at the end of the week then living off the leftovers for too long). The bags aren’t the only thing weighing her down, the invitation in her coat pocket feels like a lead weight.

            She is thoroughly unprepared for the sight of Gen’s damn Christmas tree eating up a previously unoccupied chunk of living room real estate. She’s cold, she’s tired, she’s carrying a stupid amount of baggage both real and metaphorical, and Gen’s _goddamn Christmas tree_ is shedding needles all over the living room carpet. There’s boxes of junk _everywhere_ , vomiting up sloppy strings of lights and tinsel and various Christmas _crap_. General Antiope comes rushing for the door when Irene unlocks it, charging for her owner’s very sore feet. Irene swerves, trips anyway, and staggers into the doorframe. General Antiope bolts for the hallway, a move Gen notices, meaning he’s racing out the door after her, knocking Irene over just as she almost finds her feet.

            She gives up and just sits on the floor, breathing in and out through her nose; fists clenched around the handles of her reusable grocery bags.

            Gen comes back in, whistling, disgruntled tabby in his arms. “What are you doing on the floor?” he asks, completely and totally innocently and it _pisses Irene off._

            Irene is very cold and very far away; her hands are numb. “ _What_ is all of this _stuff_ doing in my _house_?” she breathes. It’s not a house; it’s an apartment. It’s _her_ apartment except it’s not anymore, she invited this strange _person_ into her whole _life_ and the weight of that is settling on her shoulders, on her chest, like a heavy lead blanket. What has she done? What does she even know about this man? This whole other human being, with a whole other life just _existing_ in her space? The enormity of that feels incalculable.

            Gen is kneeling in front of her, eyes wide and concerned. “Irene?”   
            “Why the hell is there a _tree_ in my living room?” she says, tone flat and edged like a sword.

            “It’s a Christmas tree? I texted you this morning.”

            Irene remembers this vaguely. She’d checked her phone between surgical consultations, seen a rambling message from Gen and hazarded a ‘do whatever you want’ when she saw it was a question. (She will soon learn that telling Gen to do whatever he wants is a special kind of dangerous.)

            “And I said you could bring the forest home with you?”

            “You said it was fine…”

            “What about this looks fine?” she snaps, voice frosty.

            One of his eyebrows crooks upward, “I thought everything, until you came in and started yelling at me.”

            “I am not. Yelling.” She isn’t, her voice is chilly and even.

            “I’m sorry, I meant speaking in a deceptively calm but frigidly furious tone,” Gen snaps because it’s not only her patience that’s stretching to the breaking point.

            “And you’re hovering. And reek of pine sap.”

            “That’s what happens when you carry in a tree.”

            “A live tree. You brought a _live_ tree.Inside.”

            “Yeah? I’m not paying eighty dollars for a fake one.”

            She ignores the implication that he went out and cut a damn tree down illegally. He stole a tree. Her roommate stole a fucking tree. Gen has committed Grand Theft Arbor and the evidence is shedding on her carpet. “I assume you have some sort of nostalgic drivel prepared on how the smell is significant, and without it it’s not _real_ as if pine scent somehow fundamentally determines reality, which, it definitively does _not_ , and I’m a coldhearted bitch who couldn’t possibly understand or even begin to access some mystical goddamn magic of Christmas that’s so clearly lacking in my cold, dead heart!”

            Gen is staring at her with soft brown eyes and he looks so confused and she just wants to _hit him._

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, cold as ice, “I’m not a thing you pity. I’m cold and I’m distant and I’m _happy_. I’ll put on a damn beautiful dress and beautiful fucking fake smile and I’ll shake hands and smile and smile and _smile,_ and let rich old men drool at me and tell me how _very much_ I look like my mother, god rest her soul. And if I’m very lucky my father and wife number four won’t be there and my brother will send me an actual card for Christmas with my annual Macy’s gift card.” 

            She searches Gen’s face for a long moment and she watches him try and fail to find the right words to say. She breathes out through her nose and closes her eyes against the sight of his endless dark eyes and pulls herself back together. When her eyes open all the pieces have been slotted back together.

            “Keep the tree,” she says, “I’ll be in my room.” And she stands, leaving her groceries on the ground and does what she does best. She walks away with as much dignity as she can manage.

…

            When she emerges from her room all the groceries have been put away and Gen is on the phone. “I don’t think it’s supposed to look like this,” he’s saying, poking something on the stove, “No, I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. Don’t judge me, Helen, I’m trying.”

            Something starts to smoke on the stove and Gen yelps, “Shit! Helen, it’s on fire. Helen. Helen! I don’t think it’s supposed to do that. _Helen,_ ” he protests, “why is it on _fire_?” 

            Irene steps into the kitchen, to see Gen turning off the stove and shoving both pot and contents into the sink, where he turns the faucet on full blast, soaking the front of his shirt and sending up a huge gout of steam.

            “Helen,” Gen sighs into the phone, “I am never coming to you for advice again.”

            Closer, Irene can hear the shadow of a voice on the other side of the speaker. Helen, whoever she is, sounds like she’s laughing at Gen.

            “Hey, don’t laugh at my suffering. My kitchen could have caught on fire. I could have died.”

            “What an embarrassing way to go,” Irene says dryly, a joke and a peace offering, she wonders if he’ll take it, “Death by top ramen.”

            “Hey, I was making risotto like a goddamn adult who cares,” Gen snarks at her and Irene has to smile slightly. She’s tired, so tired. She forgot how exhausting being angry was.

            “You tried to make risotto?” 

            “Yes,” Gen mutters in the general direction of the sink, and then into the phone, “shut up, Helen.”  He looks back up at Irene, “I called my _ungrateful harpy cousin_ Helen for help and she has the utter _gall_ to laugh at my struggles.” 

            Irene raises an eyebrow, “Risotto is a rice dish, cooked in a broth. How did you catch it on fire?”

            “There’s wine in the recipe. Alcohol burns.”

            Irene isn’t sure how in this case, but he’s not technically wrong. She settles for humming noncommittally.

            Gen sighs, “Helen, I’m hanging up now before you call Sophos in to further mock me.  Goodbye.”

            He sets his phone down and shoots Irene an extremely expressive look she still can’t read. “I try to do a nice thing and I catch on fire for it.”

            “To be fair, you really only caught the food on fire. You didn’t actually burn yourself.”

            “Semantics,” he flicks a now-water-logged dishtowel her direction, splattering her with tiny droplets.

            She takes in the wreckage of her (their) kitchen, lips quirking wryly. “Did you...try to make me dinner?”

            “I tried to make dinner. For myself. And…anyone…generally around,” he half-heartedly sloshes water in the still-steaming pot.

            Irene’s smile grows. He won’t meet her eyes, all his focus on trying to clean the mess he’s made of the cookware. His hair’s coming loose again, falling in his eyes. She wonders if he meant to cut it and just got too distracted to follow through on it. She thinks of all his part-time jobs. She thinks of his students and finals and thesis.

            “Risotto?” she asks instead of saying any of the things she’s halfway to thinking.

            He shrugs, “Seemed like grown-up food,” is the only explanation he gives her.

            “How about pancakes instead?” she offers, “I know we can make those.”

            The smile he gives her is blinding.

…

            She’s both surprised and not when Gen says out of the blue, in the middle of frying bacon (outside of the pancake this time) and eggs, “Do you want a date to this thing?”

            “What thing?” Irene looks up from the pancake batter she’s folding frozen blueberries into.

            “The,” Gen gestures vaguely with the spatula, “fancy dress thing you’re not excited about. Although,” a single eyebrow raised, “I have yet to see you excited about anything, so I’m not holding my breath.”

            Irene huffs, “I never bring a date.”

            Gen shrugs magnificently. Irene isn’t sure where he gets the extra panache from, but she’s convinced every gesture he makes takes a second longer than it does on an ordinary person, just for the added theatricality. “Maybe that’s why these events always suck. You don’t have a cool person to hang out with and steal all the good canapés.”

            “Steal the canapés?”

            “Only the good ones,” he winks at her over his shoulder like this is a normal thing to do.

            She isn’t sure why she doesn’t just say no. His offer is ridiculous; _Gen_ is ridiculous. But he’s standing in her kitchen, helping her make breakfast food over the smoldering remains of attempted risotto after she yelled at him about a Christmas tree. He’s wearing candy cane print pajama pants and a sweatshirt that says ‘Will Work for Presents’ in glittery gold letters.

            “Do you even own a tux?” is what comes out of her mouth.

            He grins like the Cheshire cat. “Of course I do. Is that an invite? To be your plus-one?”

            She frowns and says, “Your shirt doesn’t make any sense. Working for presents is just the barter system. Labor for profit. Basic economics.”

            He throws his head back and laughs like he’s won something. She throws a blueberry at him because he hasn’t. He doesn’t seem to mind.

…

            Eugenides Eddisian does indeed own a tux. It even fits him. Irene is fairly certain her mouth would be hanging open if she were a lesser woman. As it is, she gives him an appraising once-over while he spins like a runway model.

            “Like what you see?”

            “Are you ever serious?”

            “Rarely, if ever,” his mischievous grin softens into something else, “You look stunning as usual.”

            Irene isn’t sure what he means by ‘as usual’. It feels like recently all he’s seen her in is baggy sick-day sweatshirts and leggings, or worse, scrubs and hospital hair. But tonight, tonight she knows she looks good.

            Her dress is deceptively simple, a silk, floor length off the shoulder number gathered into a Grecian empire waist. The drape of the single shoulder cut leaves a generous stretch of her upper back bare without revealing enough to become One of Those Women. It’s rich, ruby red and the folds of the skirt cascade down from where its’ fitted through the natural waist gorgeously, falling into a modified A-line all the way to the floor. Her jewelry is gold with ruby accents, a bracelet at each wrist and a chain braided into her heaps of dark hair. It took an hour and a whole can of hairspray to arrange, but she’s proud of the up-do. She couldn’t find earrings to match so she isn’t wearing any.

            She remembers being a little girl, her mother chiding her when she tried to wear her rose gold bracelet with her silver earrings. _‘Better to go without than to go mismatched,’_ she’d sing-songed, like a nursery rhyme. Irene had been excited to wear her bracelet and her earrings. The bracelet was new for Christmas, from her Grandma. But she’d gotten her ears pierced only a few weeks before and she couldn’t take the earrings out yet. She was seven and didn’t understand how her mother could care so much about whether or not her jewelry matched but care so little about the spelling bee she won last month.

            That was before she fully understood priorities and Appearances.

            Irene knows she’s just another Poor Little Rich Girl. She doesn’t grant herself pity. She stitches people up every day who’ve had it worse than she has. But sometimes she wonders what her mother might have been like without the Tiffany wedding band and the hard, severe set to her mouth as her cold eyes scanned the crowd for younger, prettier women who might get near Augustus Attolia under her nose.

            “Thank you,” she says to Gen instead of ‘does my jewelry match my dress?’ or ‘is my hair alright?’ or ‘don’t make me go out there.’

            His pocket square matches her dress exactly. She wonders how he managed that.

            He offers her his arm with a flourish. “My lady.”

            “No one can see us here, no need for formality.”

            He grins, “That’s why it’s fun. No one’s looking.” 

            She takes his arm.

…

            She’s taller than Gen, she realizes when they’re circulating through the room, arm-in-arm because there’s something comforting about a warm human body by your side when you’re in a sea of sharks. She’s wearing heels but even without them she’d still have an inch or two on him. He doesn’t seem to mind; his smile is just the right side of vaguely polite as they move around the periphery.

            “Anyone I’m not allowed to make fun of?” he murmurs in her ear and she wonders how he got so good at this.

            “To their faces or just to me?”

            “Either, or.”

            She points out the handful of hospital board members and a few key donors. “Leave them alone.”

            “All I hear is ‘sneak a salmon puff into their pockets while they’re not looking’.”

            “You are terrible, why do I bring you places?” she mutters, her mask is too good for a laugh to slip out but he must hear the shadow of it in her voice.

            “You don’t bring me places. I’m sorely neglected. I think that one’s going to try to go home with the bartender. And that one is definitely sleeping with that one’s wife.”

            “Any other speculations?”

            “Hmm,” he scans the crowd, picking out a few likely victims, indicating them with a slight tilt of his head one by one, “Embezzlement. Fraud. Foot fetish.”

            “I almost believed you until you hit the foot fetish.”

            Gen scoffs, “Look at how he’s eyeing that woman’s ankles. And the arch of her foot. He’s really into it.”

            “You are absurd.”

            “I try, dear. Canapé?”

            She stares at him, “Where did you get that?”

            “Fliched it off the plate of that one banker who kept staring at your breasts.”

            Unbidden, Irene’s eyes flick down to her chest, “You can’t even see my breasts.”

            “I know,” Gen observes, “he seemed very disappointed.”

            She sighs and accepts the miniature quiche.

            Her father isn’t here, she realizes, scanning the room with a vague sense of relief. She hasn’t seen him since her medical school graduation, when he video-called her to offer stilted congratulations from his yacht in the Mediterranean. It’s been three years.

            Someone else is here, though, and at the sight of that familiar heavy, borderline brutish frame she immediately spins her and Gen in a clumsy turn that he follows through with surprisingly little resistance. She marches them in the other direction, any other direction – the bar, the bar is a nice direction. She marches them there. Her heart is beating a sickening rhythm somewhere in the vicinity of her throat and her hands are cold again. She’s clenching them, the pressure where her fingers press into her palms bright, hot spots of pain. She focuses on that. The Christmas lights seem very bright somehow, like flashbulbs, disproportionate. Gen is dead silent in a way that is almost eerie.

            They get to the bar and it’s like surfacing when you’ve been underwater for just this side of too long.

            “Knob Creek Manhattan, up.” She orders on autopilot.

            “Just red wine is fine,” Gen says, when the bartender looks his way. And when the woman, who might be younger than Gen, Irene realizes, and isn’t that funny, says “I’ll need to see some ID,” he swears under his breath in what sounds like three languages and pats down his pockets, finally producing it when he’s ventured into the third flavor of profanity.

            She wonders if he’s doing it to make her laugh. Or if that’s giving Gen’s observational skills too much credit.

            Gen flashes his ID, says, “I’m twenty-three for god’s sake,” earning an awkward giggle from the bartender. They collect their drinks and move to a corner table just a smidgeon too close to one of the Christmas trees and too far away from the other tables for comfortable conversation or eavesdropping.

            “The conspiracy table,” Gen says cryptically when they sit down.

            “What?” Irene blinks at him.

            He shrugs, “When my grandfather threw parties like this he’d always put one table just a bit too close to the décor and just a bit too far away from everyone else. He called it the ‘conspiracy table’. He said no party is complete without a place where you can tell everyone to politely fuck off.” He gives her a crooked grin, “He didn’t like fancy parties much. Or people.”

            “I can see that,” she says and her voice is cool and even, just how it should be. She scans the crowd again, doesn’t see Him.

            “Hey, no,” Gen says, voice all over concern and Irene wonders what she did wrong, where did her mask slip? “Don’t do the robot voice, not now. We were having a good time, you and me.”

            “I apologize,” she says politely, a well-trained doll, “What were you saying?”

            He looks at her, really looks at her and it is as uncomfortable as it is comforting. “I was saying I’m worried about you. Did you see someone awful? Do you want me to fight them? I can totally fight them for you. Or say really mean things about their mother. Or their father. Or their cat. Do they have a cat I can insult?”

            He’s trying to make her laugh, and normally it would work but instead it’s just chipping away at her mask. The mask is cracking and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if it’s ever completely gone. “Gen,” she says, touching his wrist, effectively cutting off the flow of words. He goes completely still underneath her hand, and she imagines he’s still vibrating slightly, like a dog waiting to be told he can run. She wonders if this is the first time she’s ever voluntarily touched him. She thinks it might be. She wonders if he realizes that too.

            “Gen.” she starts again. His eyes are too much, she thinks. His eyes on her are too much. “It’s complicated,” she tries, “It’s complicated and it’s in the past but there is a man over there I very much do not wish to see or I might do something I regret.”

            “Like what?” He seems genuinely interested. Irene wonders where exactly this strange man came from and how he can get away with wanting to know her like this.

            “Like...poison his goddamn cheap rum and coke,” she snaps, surprising ever herself.

            Gen’s eyes crinkle a little, just at the corners. “Well I don’t think I can manage that. People might talk. But insulting his cat is still on the table.”

            She smiles. She smiles and it hurts, it’s physically painful she’s so angry with That Man but Gen is here and he’s not being good and he’s not on anyone’s definition of best behavior but he’s _here_ , really here. And that’s more than anyone has been for her in a long time.

            She takes a sip of her Manhattan to chase the ghost of rum and coke out of her mouth. “I’ll tell you the whole story later.” 

            Gen just nods and changes the subject. “How much do you think I’d have to pay off that professional string ensemble to play ‘Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer’?” 

            She laughs out loud.

…

            They go home tipsy and warm, stumbling on the stairs, fumbling with the key in the lock, still arm-in-arm and full of bubbles and fizz like they’d been drinking champagne all night instead of anything else. At the door there’s a moment where they’re close, too close and Irene wonders what it’d be like to kiss someone she has to lean down slightly to reach. And Gen reaches up and brushes a loose hair out of her face, the very pads of his fingertips just barely grazing her cheek. She feels where they were long after the hand vanishes, the marks are invisible but they burn. And they’re so close she imagines she can sense the corona of body heat drifting off of him, melding with hers, sharing warmth in a very literal sense. Their eyes are still locked together and he licks his lips and says, “I think I’d ask permission before I’d kiss you. Or at least give you fair warning.”

            “Why’s that?” Irene asks, her own voice softening to match his.

            An eyebrow tilts upward, “Who knows what you might do to me if I didn’t?”

            She smiles slightly, he’s not wrong, and because she’s just drunk enough for it not to matter yet matter quite a lot, she tips her head so their skulls meet in the middle and they just stand there, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air for a long moment. Her heartbeat is very loud and she thinks about veins, running beneath the skin, his and hers and wonders if it’s possible for two human hearts to ever have the exact same rhythm.

It seems unlikely.

And then the door unlocks like a sudden miracle and they’re stumbling into the apartment, loose-limbed and easy and Gen is laughing at nothing and staring into a void Irene thinks only he can see.

They end up on the floor of the living room with hot chocolate that’s 30% eggnog, 15% whiskey, 5% peppermint and only a measly 50% chocolate. Their mugs are different this time, Irene’s says ‘Work With Me, People’ and Gen’s says ‘Time to Drink Champagne and Dance on the Table’. Her feet are in his lap and they’re both leaning on the couch, still close, still warm.

Gen rubs her feet absently and sips his drink, humming ‘Silent Night’ under his breath. The Christmas tree glows softly just to their right. It’s crooked and none of the ornaments match, but they all have stories and ‘sentimental value’ according to Eugenides. Irene believes him. General Antiope is asleep on the tree skirt, having displaced the handful of presents placed there. She seems very pleased with herself, the colored lights casting strange shadows on her orange tabby fur.

Looking at her cat, sipping her homemade cocktail, Irene finds the words. “He was supposed to marry me.”

Gen’s hands still momentarily on the arches of her feet before continuing, “The guy at the party?”

Irene hums a confirmation. “I didn’t want him to. It wasn’t…we weren’t really dating. Just. That was the understanding. Our fathers were business associates. We were supposed to get married someday. He was older than me. It doesn’t seem like much now but a few years is a huge gap when you’re eighteen and he’s already in law school. I remember…I remember my father introduced me to him, officially, at the Christmas party my senior year of high school. He didn’t come out and say it but the subtext was pretty clear. ‘You’re going to graduate, you’re going to go to a Good College, you’re going to get engaged to this man and then you’ll get married, maybe you’ll finish college, maybe you won’t.’ Only those weren’t the words. They never say what they mean, do they? Never.”

Gen’s not so much massaging her feet anymore but gently rubbing them, a constant pressure of ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here’. It reminds Irene that she’s here.

“He started coming to all these family parties. My birthday party. Easter dinner. Parties for the company. And he was just…my date. It was just assumed. He’d always put his hand on my lower back. He had huge, heavy hands, and he’d steer me like I was a goddamn ship. Like I needed to be herded along like a sheep. He made jokes about how quiet I was. Called me his ‘little shadow’ and I don’t know if I wanted to cry or break his head open more.  He’d order food for me in restaurants and he’d always eat whatever was left because I never finished anything because being around him made. Me. Sick.”

Irene drags in a breath. Her voice has stayed even through some trick or miracle. She can’t look at Gen. She can’t. The words have started and there’s no stopping them but she doesn’t think she can stand whatever she will see in his eyes.

“He was my prom date. He was at my graduation party. The one with the parents, and the one after, the one with all the future-Mister-so-and-so’s and all their future wives. There was booze. God, there was so much liquor. And not just high school beer, good stuff. Top shelf vodka and scotch and all he ever drank was cheap rum and coke. I don’t remember much because that was the first time I ever got drunk, see? He kept bringing me white wine. I hate white wine. I drink red. But I remember his hands on me and I remember being frightened and so, so, angry when he got me alone. His hands were everywhere and I was dizzy, the whole room was spinning. He didn’t bother to take off my skirt; just shoved it up my thighs like I was a whore in a pirate movie and he only had a few minutes to spare. I broke a bottle on his head and I cut his face with the broken-off neck of the thing because I remembered reading somewhere that in Sparta if a man attacks a woman she always makes sure to mark up his face so all the other women know what he’s done.”

Another breath, she’s coming to the end of the story and she knows it could have been worse. The doctors and nurses told her. It could have been so much worse. Someone said ‘you’re lucky’ and she remembers saying, cold as ice, “If I’m lucky he’ll have so many scars he won’t recognize himself”. Because she wanted to leave a goddamn mark.

“It was a long time ago,” she summarizes and takes another sip of her drink. It’s lukewarm now.

Gen’s hand squeezes her foot gently just once, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“I know,” she says and she actually does know.

“I wish you could have poisoned his drink.”

“At least I left a mark.” 

She risks a glance over at Gen and he’s watching her with those inscrutable dark eyes of his again. He opens one arm in a classic ‘hug?’ gesture she’s seen on tv before. She thinks about how he said he’d give her fair warning if he was going to kiss her. She leans into his chest and lets him wrap an arm around her shoulders.

…

            The next morning Gen wakes her up with French toast and “Sledding, yes or yes?” 

            She throws a pillow at his head. He ducks out of the doorframe, “Costis invited me. Pleeeeease?”

            “Go by yourself.”

            “Then Kamet will be lonely. You don’t want Kamet to be lonely.” 

            “He’ll have you and his giant boyfriend.” 

            Gen sighs, “Kamet doesn’t like snow. He needs someone to stand by with him and judgmentally watch us make idiots of ourselves or he’ll be grumpy.”

            Irene sits up, squinting at him. “Is that food for me?”

            “What, this?” Gen holds up the plate, “This is a bribe, dear.” 

            Irene throws another pillow at his head because she knows she’s going to fall for his stupid, stupid bribe.

            “Is that a yes?” he asks, while ducking for cover out of reach of flying pillows.

            Irene falls backward onto her bed. “Bring me the damn toast.”

            Gen cheers where her throwing arm can’t reach him.

…

            Gen wasn’t exaggerating. Kamet does hate the snow. “I wasn’t raised for this. I grew up in the desert. Where it’s warm.” 

            “It gets cold in the desert at night,” Costis observes blandly, chuckling when his irritated boyfriend elbows him in the ribs, “What? It does.”

            Kamet sighs gustily. “I’m not built for this weather.” 

            Of course, Costis, being a sap, unwraps his scarf from around his neck, draping it delicately around his companion’s shoulders and kissing him on the cheek.

            “Whipped,” Gen coughs under his breath and Costis casually, smile still in place, shoves him into a snowbank.

            Irene snorts into her own scarf, a soft green cashmere wrap tucked into the collar of her grey peacoat. (Gen had scanned her outfit when they left the apartment, a single eyebrow raised, and said “Nice, we’ll look like an L.L. Bean catalogue spread,” with a cheeky grin.)

            Gen pops out of the snow, icy flurries flying off his hat as he shakes himself free, “Hey, no fair! No using your thugliness against me!”

            “It’s not my fault you’re so tiny,” Costis says with a benign smile.

            Gen huffs and flails his way out of the snowdrift, “Irene, defend my honor.” 

            “Pass,” Irene manages to say with a straight face up until the moment a snowball flies past her nose to burst against Costis’ shoulder.

            Gen, who apparently used his snowbank flailing as a cover for snowball-making, is still up to his knees in powder and grinning like a loon, two more snowballs in his hands.

            “Oh no,” Costis says gravely, “Gen, you know how this ends.” 

            “Victory or death?” 

            “Total annihilation.”

            Irene is considering a tactical retreat when Kamet pulls her out of the line of fire. Just it time, it would seem, as Costis scoops up a heap of snow, not even bothering to pack it into aerodynamic spheres, and dumps it on Gen’s head. Or tries to, Gen darting out of the way at the last minute, jumping higher than Irene would ever expected him to be capable of, and chucking a snowball down the back of his significantly taller friend’s coat. Costis spins around with a roar, Gen already fleeing for cover, cackling.

            “This could take a while,” Kamet says, mouth twisted wryly. Irene doesn’t miss the way he buries his nose appreciatively in Costis’ scarf.

            “Hot chocolate?” Irene suggests, eyeing the coffee stand across the park.

            He snorts, “Mochas. With an extra shot of espresso.”

            Across the field Costis grabs Gen’s hat (bright yellow and lumpy with tassels, another project from his crochet-happy cousin) and rubs a handful of snow into his dark hair. Gen shrieks, dodges away and kicks a heap of snow into Costis’ face.

            Irene nods, “Extra espresso it is.”

…

            “Do you ever get jealous of,” coffee in hand, Irene gestures vaguely toward where Gen has jumped on Costis’ shoulders from where he was perched on a snowy tree branch.

            “All that bromance?” Kamet asks archly, taking a sip of his coffee. He shakes his head, “No. Surprisingly, no.” 

            Across the field Costis throws Gen into another snowdrift, Gen popping up and chucking more snow in his friend’s face.

            Kamet shrugs, “I don’t see the point of jealousy. Costis loves me. He loves Eugenides too, but…differently.”

            Costis has Gen in a headlock now, until Gen bites him and he pulls away, shaking a mitten-ed hand.

            Irene laughs at the look on Costis’ face as he shoves Gen’s shoulder and Gen pops right back up like a demented jack in the box. “Differently,” she agrees.

            “Did you bring coffee for us?” Gen calls over to them.

            “No, you don’t need any more energy,” Irene calls back.

            “Spoilsport,” he sticks his tongue out at her and she laughs.

            Kamet gives her a look over the lip of his coffee cup.

            She shoots a quelling look right back at him and he takes a pointed sip of his drink.

…

            Kamet gives Costis half his coffee and Irene flicks Gen in the forehead when he tries to steal the rest of hers. They do go sledding, Costis sweet-talking Kamet into squeezing onto a sled with him and Gen just rolling down the hill sled or no sled. Irene watches, bundled up against the cold, clutching her rapidly cooling coffee and watching the patterns her breath makes as she exhales.

            Crunching snow heralds Costis’ arrival at her shoulder. “Having fun?” he asks, smiling when she glances his way.

            “Surprisingly, yes,” she says, shaking her head.

            “Why surprisingly?” Costis asks, the two of them watching as Gen flicks snow at Kamet, who huffs and flicks snow right back at him.

            Irene shrugs, “This was not how I expected today to unfold,” she says neutrally.

            “Nothing ever unfolds the way you expect it to around Gen,” Costis says wryly, “My life would be very different today if it weren’t for that brat.”

            Irene raises a single eyebrow, “I wasn’t aware there was that much of an age gap between the two of you.”

            Costis shakes his head; “I met Gen when he was a drunk seventeen year old freshman, lost at a frat party. He’s always going to be a bit of a kid to me,” another wry headshake, “No matter how many times he lies, manipulates and outsmarts me.”

            Irene blinks, “I’m sorry?”

            Costis waves a hand, “He’s Gen. He has _plots_. His plots have plots. His plots’, plots’ have plots. And the funny thing is, they always seem to work out, even when they shouldn’t,” he smiles, “Gen’s the reason I met Kamet.”

            “Really?”

            He pauses, “Well, Gen, two health inspectors, one corrupt fast food franchiser and a suspicious fire are the reason I met Kamet. But Gen was indirectly responsible for most of it.”

            Irene wonders what Gen’s version of this story is. Irene wonders what _Kamet’s_ version of this story is.

            Costis smiles benignly, “I’m glad you’re looking out for him.”

            Looking out for who? Gen? Irene doesn’t know what Costis means. She nods serenely anyway.

            He smiles like they’ve had a deep conversation with absolutely no indecipherable subtext and walks off to rescue his boyfriend from Gen’s shenanigans.  

…

            Irene doesn’t generally look forward to Christmas. She takes the week of the holiday off anyway, because she never takes time off so she might as well. But the day itself doesn’t hold much appeal. She doesn’t have plans. Her last day of work she’ll give candy canes to all the nurses, same as she’s done every year. She’ll give Relius a card and a tin of caramel popcorn because he’s the hospital psychiatrist as well as her therapist and she thinks he probably deserves some kind of reward for putting up with all their collective neuroses for another year. She’ll give Kamet a Starbucks gift card because he has a sweet tooth the size of Canada and has a secret love of ridiculous trendy things. Her brother she’ll send a card and a Visa gift card because sending a check to another adult feels wrong, but she doesn’t know enough about his life to personalize the gesture further. General Antiope she’ll get a bag of treats and far too many cat toys because she can’t stop spoiling her cat.

            She realizes she should probably get something for Gen.

            Irene has no idea what to get Gen, and time is running out. He leaves soon; she knows Gen has some kind of family plans; he’s been wandering in and out of the living room, chattering on the phone with cousins and siblings (she thinks she’ll need a family tree to decode his tangled mess of relations) for days. 

            Irene just sits, feeling like she’s in the eye of a storm as Gen turns his room inside out, packing his bags around her. She tries not to anticipate his absence, already feeling a hole in her life where he used to be. She doesn’t know why she feels this way, he hasn’t been here that long, she’s been alone for far longer. But the feeling of Gen’s impending departure is too big, too real.

            She pulls General Antiope onto her lap, despite the cat’s halfhearted protests and scratches her behind the ears. _The Muppet Christmas Carol_ is playing on the television and she watches Michael Caine’s Ebeneezer Scrooge shout at Kermit the Frog distantly as Gen talks on the phone somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen.

            “ _Penelope_ , I will get there when I get there. Nothing you do or say will expedite my departure or my arrival,” a pause, “Because, miraculously, I have lived to adulthood, which means I now have the means to secure my own mode of travel and can exist outside of your sphere of influence, as I have for many years now.”

            Gen gets wordy when he’s miffed.  

            Irene smiles down at General Antiope’s ears and tries not to think about him leaving.

            “You know what, Penny, I’m going through a tunnel. Crrk, ssssnk, static, static, static, bye now.” He hangs up.

            He shoots Irene a look, like they’re both in on some joke Irene definitely doesn’t know about, when the phone rings.

            He holds it up, “I don’t think she bought my cleverly crafted deception.”

            The phone says ‘Miss BossyPants’ under caller ID.

            “Miss BossyPants?” Irene asks.

            “Penelope, my sister,” Gen says, merrily dismissing the call, “She thinks she’s my mom. But as that would both be incestuous and biologically impossible she is not and she’s not the boss of me.” He holds up a greeting card, “She is the kind of woman who still dresses her family up in color-coordinated fall-themed sweaters and gets her Christmas photos done at the Sears mall in early September.”

            Irene takes the Christmas card from him and examines the politely smiling family on the glossy cardstock.  Three children between the ages of eight and four grin gap-toothed grins up at the camera, sandwiched between two thoroughly suburban parents. The mother, presumably Gen’s sister, doesn’t share much family resemblance. Her skin is the same warm bronze shade but her eyes are lighter, more amber-brown, and her natural hair color is a question mark, her tidily styled locks densely but classily highlighted with auburn and honey-blond. It’s hard to judge on Christmas card alone, but Irene thinks the curvy, smiling woman might be taller than Gen.

            Speak of the devil and he shall lean over the back of the couch to stick his head somewhere in the vicinity of your shoulder. “That’s Neutral Dave,” he says, pointing to the fair-skinned, brown-haired man sitting next to Penelope. His face is square is a solidly handsome but not memorable way, his middle slightly soft the way the middles of former college athletes who have since taken significantly less physically taxing desk jobs get. Irene is struggling to imagine a conversation where this man and _Eugenides_ have more than five words to say to each other. Maybe they talk about the weather.

            As if he’s sensed her train of thought, Gen says dryly, “We talk about the weather a lot. And how he doesn’t really want to be called ‘Neutral Dave’. He’s just so…medium everything. He even has an office worker haircut now. At least when he was just Dave-Penny’s-college-boyfriend he was trying to be cool and had trying-to-be-cool hair.”

            Irene actually laughs at that.

            “That’s Penny-the-perfect,” Gen indicates his sister with a dismissive flick of his wrist, “She’s nine years older than me and thinks that means she knows everything.”

            “Well she has nine years of information on you,” Irene says dryly just to see the mortally offended look on his face.

            “Betrayed. I’ve been betrayed. General Antiope, we have a traitor in our midst.” The cat seems generally unimpressed. Gen huffs and shakes his head, as if they’d had a real conversation, “Anyway, those are her adorable rugrats. Layla, eight, wants a pony for Christmas. Justinian, Dave wants us to call him ‘just Justin’ so he won’t get picked on at school. I’ve been responding accordingly but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for Dave.”

            Irene imagines Gen literally calling a small child ‘Just Justin’ to the increasing ire of the child’s parents. It’s not a difficult imagining.

            Gen shrugs, “A little teasing in school’s never done anyone any harm. Teaches you to stick up for your name.”

            Eugenides. A short, smart-mouth boy named Eugenides. He probably got picked on _a lot_.

            “At least that’s what my father said when Penny asked him to weigh in over Easter,” another shrug, “Anyway, the littlest one is Theo, four, too young to have much of a personality yet but old enough to get into everything. I have high hopes for his development.”

            Of course he did.

            “They’re supposedly trying for another one, but Penelope might be saying that just so she can traumatize me with all her talk about fertility treatments. I don’t want to know that stuff about my sister. I don’t want to know that stuff about my sister’s lame husband. I don’t want to know _any_ of it.”

            Irene pats his hand condescendingly, “There, there.”

            He frowns playfully at her, the Christmas tree’s multicolored lights casting strange shadows on his angular face – much more interesting than Neutral Dave’s. He whisks the card away, though, with a flourish, instead of allowing the moment to grow and take them wherever it might.

            “ _This_ ,” he says, replacing it with another card, “Is my sister Cassandra’s family. Cassie’s the one with the undercut.”

            A much more casual series of family photos greet Irene, underscored by a banner reading ‘Make the Yuletide Gay’. Directly above it is a snapshot of Cassandra pressing a messy kiss to the cheek of another laughing woman. Next to it sits a photo of two young children standing on a white sand beach in snorkeling gear, above it a family photo on the steps of a brownstone, the two women sitting on the top steps holding hands between them, their free arms wrapped around the children, who lean against their legs.

            Cassie does indeed have an undercut, the longer swoop of hair above it dyed fire engine red with magenta tips, the undercut itself decorated with shaved-in swirling patterns. She’s tall, towering over her tiny wife, with broad shoulders and lots of lean muscle, strong brown forearms flexing casually from where her shirt’s sleeves have been rolled up. Dark eyes twinkle daringly out from under a silver eyebrow piercing. She may be a muscular giant, but she has Gen’s wicked eyes. Her wife is more understated, with long black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a heart-shaped face. She’s like a tiny, perfect doll next to Cassandra, but they look unbearably happy.

            “They adopted Atticus and Aelia a few years ago,” Gen says, indicating a kid each, “When they were toddlers.”

            They look adopted; Irene has to acknowledge. Atticus is pasty, ginger and covered in freckles. Aelia’s skin is a deeper, richer color than either of her moms, her dark hair thicker and curlier than Cassandra’s. But they are undeniably a _family_ in a way Irene’s own biological family never was. A few years ago the sight of them would have made her heart ache. As it is, there’s just a hollow pinging sound in the vicinity of her chest that might be a feeling.

            “They’re a cute family,” she says when Gen seems to be waiting for a comment.

            Gen laughs, “I’ll have to tell Cass she’s legendary now. Wrestling a ‘cute’ from the great Irene Attolia. How very gracious of you, General Hospital.”

            The nickname is also new. She gave Gen her cold (or frolicking in the snow for hours on end really does make you sick) and he spent the past few days sniffling on the couch in his own blanket fort, where he apparently put his time sick to terrible use watching as many soaps and Hallmark fluff fests as possible. He now calls her ‘General Hospital’ because, as a very high on cold medicine Gen explained to her, in detail, if she’s General Hospital and her cat is General Antiope and he’s _Gen_ , they all _match._

            Irene doesn’t know why she likes this guy this much, she really doesn’t.

            And now that he _has_ made her microscopically short list of ‘People Irene Attolia Genuinely Likes’ she should probably do the right thing and get him a goddamn Christmas present.

            If she knew what goddamn Christmas present to get him, that is.

            “As usual,” Gen, restored to good health in the past day or so by the powers of lots of DayQuil and his own irrepressible personality (his words, not hers), continues to ramble, “Sten has bored us all to death with his incredibly standard buy-a-box-of-50-at-Costco Christmas card. There isn’t even a personal note or a photo of him! He could have been replaced with a clock-making robot and none of us would be the wiser!”

            Irene can’t actually tell if Gen is genuinely irritated or not. He gets ruffled over so many and yet so few things. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him truly angry, but she’s seen him get huffy with the microwave when his tea takes too long to reheat in the morning. She thinks he might just enjoy being casually annoyed.

            “Sten is?”

            “My brother, older, hell, they’re all older. I’m the youngest. At least Helen is dating a younger man. Now I have someone to lord my seniority over.”

            “And Helen is?”

            “Cousin. Excellent in every way. You’ll meet her.”

            “I will?” Irene isn’t sure what to do with Gen’s utter certainty about this fact.

            “You’ll meet all of them,” Gen’s looking at her with guileless eyes which is a sure sign he’s up to no good, “When I stealthily execute my master plan for you to come to Christmas with my family and me?”

            Irene gapes at him, “What about any of that was stealthy?” is what she finally comes up with after a long moment of silence filled with Gen beaming like he’s saying ‘don’t hurt me, I’m sweet and innocent’, both of which he is decidedly _not_.

            “Um. None of it. But I’ve been dropping hints for days, you know, trying to plant the suggestion that you can come too if you want. And Costis and Kamet are willing to look after the apartment and General Antiope while we’re gone – if there is a we that is going and not just a soon-to-be-homeless me. Just,” Gen shrugs, “No one should be alone on Christmas. Least of all you.”

            Irene feels her face freeze, “I don’t accept pity from strangers and I certainly won’t accept it from you.” 

            “It’s not pity!” Gen insists. Irene wishes she could believe him. “It’s...lonely people don’t like to admit when they feel alone,” there’s something earnest in his eyes, like he’s speaking from experience. But how could he? He has a family. He has too much of a family, if those Christmas cards are any indication. What could he possibly know about being alone? “And I know you’re rather swallow a burning sword than talk about this shit with me, and that’s fine, just – ”

            “Just what?” Irene’s voice is sharp and cold like glass and twice as brittle, “Just what do you expect to accomplish by this gesture? The warm, fuzzy feeling of trying to do a good thing, but it ultimately not working out, so you don’t actually have to follow through? Absolve yourself of any yuletide guilt quick and early?” 

            “Would you quit being a fucking martyr? I get it, you’re terrifying and don’t need anyone’s help, but I care about you, goddammit!”

            Irene blinks, stares at him for a long moment, and, “What?”

            “I care about you,” he shuffles his feet, looking almost like an embarrassed child, staring down at his festive socks, “I just don’t want you to be unhappy. Especially at Christmas. Especially when I could have invited you somewhere fun, with people who are only a little terrible. I hear they’re downright charming if you’re not a blood relative,” an uncertain smile, “Sorry. I didn’t know how to ask you. So I just kind of waited. And waited. And then blurted it out. Costis will probably kick my ass for this.”

            Irene doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she finds herself saying, “Kamet will just scoff at you. And then laugh at you.”

            “And maybe scoff some more.”

            “He does like feeling superior.”

            “As if he and Costis weren’t a hot mess when I first got them together.”

            Irene raises an eyebrow, “From what Costis tells me, two health inspectors, a suspicious fire and a corrupt fast food tycoon got them together.”

            Gen gapes at her, “But _I_ orchestrated the whole thing! I was exceptionally clever and daring about it! It was matchmaking for the ages! And the _health inspectors_ get the credit? No, I will not stand for this!” 

            Irene smiles at his histrionics, “Gen.”

            “What?” He huffs.

            “Thank you for inviting me to Christmas. Your technique could use some work.”

            “Your constructive criticism has been registered,” he says archly, “So, is this a thanks-but-no-thanks thing or…?” 

            Irene doesn’t know what possesses her to say it, but… “This is a ‘thanks’…” a deep breath, Relius would either be extremely proud of her or banging his head into a table, “thanks and what do I need to pack?”

            Gen _beams_ and Irene’s heart does something quite close to skipping as warmth pools in her chest at the thought of maybe, just maybe, not being alone for once.  


	2. Well I Can Try to Get You Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Every year we all go out to my uncle’s ski lodge,” Gen explains as they load the car.
> 
> “Your uncle has a ski lodge?” 
> 
> “One of my uncles, yeah.” 
> 
> Of course; because Gen has a veritable army of relations. They could probably take over a small country if they put their minds to it. They could probably take over this country if they let Gen loose on the White House. 
> 
> Gen and the White House. Oh god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so flattered so many people wanted more of this!
> 
> I had a pretty dreadful week at work last week so this was just the sort of comforting thing I needed. I'm not sure how many chapters there will be to this, but it definitely doesn't end here, chapter 3 is already started, haha. 
> 
> Yes, Gen and Irene will eventually get together, but it's gonna be a slow, slow burn before we get there...

“Every year we all go out to my uncle’s ski lodge,” Gen explains as they load the car, “He reserves the main house for all of us and just rents out the cabins the week of Christmas.”

            “Your uncle has a ski lodge?” Irene is beginning to think she’s going to need to study Gen’s family tree the way high school students study for the SAT if she’s going to last the week.

            “One of my uncles, yeah.”

            Of course; because Gen has a veritable army of relations. They could probably take over a small country if they put their minds to it. They could probably take over _this_ country if they let Gen loose on the White House.

            Gen and the White House. Oh god.

            “Who all is going to be there?”

            Gen shrugs, “Probably just Uncle Ed, his kids, my siblings and assorted hangers-on” (Neutral Dave, Irene assumes), “And my father.”

            That brings Irene up short. Gen says ‘my father’ the way the bastard son says ‘my lord’ in a Shakespeare play when you know for a fact the lord in question is the source of the bastard son’s bastard nature and all connected petty resentments. “Your father?” she hedges, digging for information in a gloriously unsubtle way.

            Gen nods decisively, “My father. You might like him. He’s grim and distant and likes to wear all black and shout orders at people. Kind of like a tv doctor with a tragic past and a chip on his shoulder.”

            Irene is tempted to ask if he does have a tragic past and a chip on his shoulder but that doesn’t seem like appropriate casual conversation material, “Will your mother be there?”

            For one second Gen freezes mid-motion, as if he really has to consider where to put the smaller of Irene’s matched suitcase set. But it’s such a brief stutter in time, it’s almost as if it didn’t happen at all. Like the DVD with her life on it hit a nick or scratch and skipped just a little bit.

            “No. My mom died when I was ten.”

            His mom. His father is ‘my father’ but his mother is _Mom_. 

            “I’m sorry to hear that.”

            Gen shrugs, “It’s been thirteen years.”

            “It’s been fourteen for me.” Irene doesn’t know what possessed her to say that, but the words snuck out anyway.

            Gen looks at her the way he sometimes does, like his eyes are dark holes in the universe, pulling pieces of her into them. “I’m sorry,” he says, and they both know how useless the words are. But what do you say in the face of that kind of grief.

            Irene doesn’t so much shrug, as make a small gesture with her shoulders that never comes to full completion, “We were never very close.  I was away at boarding school most of the time. My parents were never terribly interested in being parents.” Her voice is even, cool and controlled. She wonders if Gen hears the small, sad ghost in the back of her neutral tone.

            “My mom was my best friend,” Gen says finally, “and my dad didn’t know what to do with me.”  It feels like the most honest thing he’s ever said to her and she barely knows what it means.

…

            Irene is firmly convinced Gen has GPS on his phone purely so he can argue with his navigation app. An app that is not plain old Google maps or, god forbid, _Siri_ , because why use the built-in user-friendly features on your phone when you could get an unnecessary app to do it for you? 

            (“You can customize the voice that talks to you,” Gen explained, “You can set it to boy band. _There’s a boy band setting_. It’s hilarious!”)

            Irene wonders about her roommate, she really does.

            The app’s automated voice is not set to ‘boy band’ anymore because Irene threatened to throw Gen’s phone onto the nearest freeway if it kept singing ‘turn right, baaaaabyyyy’. 

            “Kamet said the same thing,” Gen observed as he switched it over.

            “Will wonders never cease,” Irene replied dryly.

            It has a British accent now and Gen will not stop bickering with it in the most one-sided way humanly possible.

            If Irene knew how, she’d turn the voice off herself. As it is, she tries to distract Gen from squabbling with it. “Tell me about your siblings.” 

            “Sten’s my favorite, he makes custom watches and designs crazy stuff I don’t understand. He taught me how to read.”

            “The one with the boring Christmas cards.”

            “Exactly,” Gen grins, “He’s eleven years older than me. I think the others envy him for getting out of the house before I figured out how to make their lives really interesting.”

            “Interesting?”

            “I figured out how to get on the roof when I was eight.”

            “Ah.” Irene can imagine the fallout from that discovery.

            Gen laughs like she made some sort of joke, “And Penny’s nine years older than me, perfect in every way, of course. Married her college sweetheart three months after graduation, beautiful children, steady office job, the picket-fence life all the way.”

            “Somehow I can’t see you ever wanting that.”

            “Did you?”

            The question takes her by surprise, “What?”

            “Ever want the picket fence life?”

            Did she? Irene never really considered it.  All she wanted was her own life, making her own money, controlling her own world for once. (They say all doctors have god complexes, especially surgeons, she can’t really argue with the assessment sometimes, she knows the power inherent in holding the pieces of someone’s life quite literally in your hands.)  “No,” she finally settles on, “I wanted to be free. Fences would have been…counterintuitive.” That’s too poetic. That’s the sappy, literary, Charles-Dickens-novel shit (or maybe it’s Danielle Steele, maybe she’s in the wrong genre). That’s the stuff you don’t say because it’s embarrassing and self-centered.

            “Hmm,” Gen is considering her and not for the first time Irene wishes she could read his mind. The moment breaks, though, when the GPS spits some nonsense out and Gen yelps at it, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take the exit in the _opposite_ direction of where we’re going. That makes _perfect_ sense!”

            “Which brother is the one who got you stranded in Santa Land?” Irene asks, just to have something to say that’s not about how incompetent the computer guidance system is.

            “Temenus,” Gen grunts, “He’s five years older than me and a dick.”

            “Ah,” Irene says flatly, lips turning upward slightly at Gen’s pained expression.

            “He wants to be just like Dad and it’s the _worst._ ” 

            “Of course,” Irene agrees neutrally, tucking her smile away where her irate roommate won’t see it.

            “Dad’s a decorated war hero, marine, ooh-rah all the way, we call him ‘The General’ cuz that’s what he literally _is_ , so Tem joined up the second he graduated high school, of course.”

            Irene cuts a glance over to Gen in the driver’s seat. He’s not out of shape, but he’s a lean, squirrelly type of physically fit. The kind made for running, jumping, and climbing. She thinks of his sisters’ Christmas cards. Cassandra’s broad shoulders, Penny’s height.  

            “He’s a giant, isn’t he?”

            “Yep.”

            “Beat you up a lot?”

            “When he could catch me,” Gen says with a wicked grin.

            Irene actually laughs at that, “I bet the roof came in handy then.”

            “Why do you think I learned how to get up there in the first place?”

…

            They stop for chicken nuggets and waffle fries at a Wendy’s just off the highway. Gen gets a kids’ meal with his actual adult order because he wants the cheap toy. “I’m going to send it to Costis,” he explains, “I like to keep him on his toes.”

            Irene just stares at him. If she waits him out she has a fifty percent chance of him explaining.

            “I have to do something weird with no explanation periodically just to keep Costis guessing what my master plan is.”

            “That’s sick.”

            He shrugs, “And a few years ago I kept leaving Happy Meal toys all over our apartment until Costis came to McDonald’s just to yell at me and ‘oh look, have you met my co-worker _Kamet_?’” Gen wiggles his eyebrows, “All part of a master plan. The kid’s meal toys are just for the nostalgia tinged with paranoia now.”

            “I thought Kamet and Costis’ first meeting involved more fire and corruption.”

            “The fire and corruption came after. Or more like the corruption was ongoing, and the cause of the fire. It’s complicated.”

            Irene is fairly certain every inch of Gen’s life is somehow ‘complicated’.

…

            “Okay,” Gen says when they’re back in the car and moving, “let’s go over it again. Siblings.”

            “Sten, Penny, Cassandra, Temenus.”

            “And Iris.”

            “What?” Irene feels like she would have gotten all of this way sooner if Gen just gave her all the information upfront. Preferably in a color-coded study guide. But Gen’s brain is about as straightforward as a particularly twisty slinky on a good day.

            “Iris is Temenus’ twin sister.”

            Irene wonders if it’s too undignified to just rest her forehead against the dashboard and wish for death. She figures it is and maintains perfect posture anyway.

            “Ed is my uncle, The General is my father – ”

            “Does he have his own name?”

            “Yes, but it’s apparently the source of all his power and must therefore be kept secret at all costs,” Gen says with a completely straight face that only makes Irene want to smack him a little, “Dia is my aunt, Ed’s wife. I’ve got another aunt but she loathes travel so she’s never there. Helen is Ed’s daughter, my cousin, she’s dating Sophos, whose godfather Magnus will be there – we call him The Magus – ”

            “Sophos or the godfather?”

            “Magnus. And by we I mean me.”

            “Of course you do.” Gen has a terrible habit of nicknaming things. He’s one of those people that names his car.

            “Helen has three brothers and one sister, who will not be joining us.”

            The urge to smack Gen has increased in strength. She wonders how Cosits managed to avoid murdering him in his sleep all the years they roomed together. “Who will not be joining us?”

            “Helen’s sister. Her brothers will probably be around, but her sister is off having Christmas with her boyfriend’s family in _Hawaii_ , of all places,” Gen rolls his eyes just to drive home how very much he disdains the concept of pleasantly tropical climes at Christmas.

            “I think I need to make a chart to keep up with all of you.”

            Gen waves a hand disdainfully, “You really don’t need to bother. Just yell ‘Eddisian’ at any of us and we’ll respond. Except for Penny and Neutral Dave. She’s Mrs. Neutral Dave now.”

            Irene is 100% certain that is not Penelope’s legal name but lets it slide. “Any significant others I need to know about?”

            “Just Neutral Dave and Kiki – Cassie’s wife. Sten’s a spinster – ” Irene is certain that’s not the proper use of that word, “Tem brings a different blonde airhead every other year, but I think he’s solo this round, and Iris isn’t seeing anyone seriously. She’s focusing on her kid and her career.”

            Irene can name every single bone, artery and vital organ in the human body as well as all the regions of the brain. She is not going to be beaten by Eugenides Eddisian’s family. No matter how many of them there are. She nods, “Okay.”

            Gen grins at her, “You’ll be great.”

…

            After all that prep work – plus a small eternity of Gen singing along to the radio in the car, trying to get her to join in – their arrival is almost anticlimactic. It’s gotten dark because this far north it gets dark early, their tires crunch over the snow as they pull up a long, tree-lined drive to what Gen describes, not inaccurately as “the cabin to end all cabins, the alpine mothership, the log in the Lincoln, Little House on the Prairie on steroids”.

            It’s a massive rustic lodge made almost entirely of rough-hewn timber, lit by cute little old-fashioned lantern-topped lampposts. Shrouded in snow and framed by pines, it looks like a Christmas card come to life.

            It might as well be a foreign country as far as Irene is concerned.

            “Wow, no welcoming committee?” Gen observes as they park the car, “Excellent, I hope they’re all at dinner and not expecting me until tomorrow morning.”

            Of course he wants to make a scene – this is his family and, well, he’s Gen. “Did you tell them you were brining a guest?” she asks. She had assumed he would check with his family first before inviting a stranger to their family Christmas gathering, but with Gen who actually knows?

            “I told them I might bring my roommate with me. Penny laughed at me for some reason; I think they still feel weird about that time they all thought Costis was my boyfriend.” 

            Irene wonders if she should even ask.

            Luckily, Gen seems to be in an explaining mood as they unload the trunk, “Costis is a few years older than me, we met in college. But when he graduated and got an off-campus apartment, he needed a roommate. I was a junior, so I qualified for off-campus housing by then and the rent was cheap so…” a gesture like that’s all the explanation Gen’s undergraduate domestic situation requires, “Anyway, one year he couldn’t go home for Christmas. So I took him with me.”

            “Picking up strays is a habit?”

            “I put very little effort into the picking, they just kind of stick to me like Velcro,” Gen huffs, passing her suitcase over to her, “And because apparently NO ONE UNDERSTANDS HOW BISEXUALITY WORKS, they assumed this meant I was secretly gay and he was my secret gay boyfriend. They were incredibly supportive of this. Something about Cosits just makes people want to marry off their sons and daughters to him, I guess. That became the Christmas I gave half my family pamphlets on bisexual erasure instead of Christmas cards. Fun times.”

            Irene isn’t sure if she should chuckle or express sympathy. Gen must sense her confusion because he shoots her a reassuring smile.

            “It’s all good now. Me being bi is just another thing they can add to their list of ‘things Gen does that are confusing but harmless’. I think they were mostly miffed they didn’t get to keep Costis. It’s too bad Kamet doesn’t have any parents; they’re missing out on a great son-in-law.” 

            Irene can feel her eyebrow climbing to her hairline at the phrase ‘too bad Kamet doesn’t have any parents’, “How are you both the most heartfelt yet wildly inappropriate person I know?”

            A shrug, “It’s a gift. Now come on, I want to startle people. We’re going for someone to freeze mid-chew. Bonus points if someone spits out their drink.” 

            Gen had stuck his hand out in a dramatic ‘take my hand and we’ll conquer the world’ gesture, not quite in earnest, but she finds herself taking it anyway, and letting him coax her into running all the way up to the house, even through the snow.

            She feels like she needs to start keeping a list of all the little things she learns about Eugenides Eddisian. He’s the kind of person who can say a bunch of things but mean next to none of them. Or, maybe more accurately, he can say a bunch of things but all of them are meaningless. He’s never who he says he is, he’s too slippery for that.

            Running through gently falling snow, slipping between pools of lamplight, Irene studies the back of his head and wonders about the twists and turns of his brain.

            Re: Eugenides

            Item 1: He loves his family

            Item 1, addendum: The relationship is complicated

…

            They do manage to startle someone into pausing mid-chew, but no one spits out their drink. Someone does throw a breadroll at them, which Irene thinks should earn them extra points. Especially since Gen snatched it out of the air and took a big bite out of it, sending someone who had just taken an ill-timed sip into a coughing fit.

            “Honey, I’m home,” Gen says with his mouth full and Irene kicks him.

            “I know you have manners.”

            He swallows, “Sure. Do you want half of this bread roll, Irene? Sharing is caring.”

            She kicks him again.

            “Ow. You’re nicer to me at home.”

            “You’re better behaved at home.”

            This is patently false. It’s just far less embarrassing when Gen does ridiculous things in the comfort of their living room instead of in front of an audience of strangers whose home Irene has causally invaded.

            “Who is this?” someone finally demands, a woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, with blonde highlights and a few inches of height on Gen. Penelope, Irene assumes.

            “Eugenides. Your brother. Are you already senile? You know, they tell you being over thirty is ‘old’ just to sell you more beauty products. You don’t actually have to mentally age accordingly, Pen,” Gen says, clearly relishing the attention, and the roll he’s picking apart and snacking on.

            Penelope’s mouth opens with some sort of retort ready when another woman interrupts her.

            “You must be Irene. Gen’s told me so much about you.” The new speaker is a slightly younger woman, Irene would guess she’s somewhere near her own age or a few years behind her. She’s short like Gen, but broad-shouldered where he’s lithe. She isn’t beautiful, her nose doesn’t quite fit her face, and it looks like it’s been broken at least once and healed crooked. Her hair is short, dark curls going every which way, and her skin is a warm brown like Gen’s.  But her eyes are lively and inviting, and her smile makes all her face’s imperfections completely irrelevant.

            “See, Helen knows who we are,” Gen says with a tilt of an eyebrow at Penelope.

            “Careful, I’ll throw another bread roll at you,” Helen warns her cousin.

            “Don’t, it will just encourage him,” an older man suggests.

            “The Magus,” Gen stage-whispers to Irene.

            “Magnus,” the man interrupts, “My name is Magnus and after all these years I think you could bother to use it.”

            “Mmm, thanks but no thanks.”

            “Who is this woman?” Penelope demands from where she has yet to sit down.

            “Well that’s Helen,” Gen says unhelpfully, a carefully constructed innocent look on his face as he indicates his cousin.

            “ _Gen._ ”

            “No, I’m not a woman. _I’m your brother_ ,” he says, dragging out each syllable of ‘brother’.

            “You’re a menace is what you are,” the Magus – Magnus – dammit, Eugenides – observes.

            “Glad to have you back, Gen,” a man who must be Helen’s father – they share the same broad shoulders and broken noses – says from the head of the table.

            “Yes, welcome, and…your guest?” the older woman beside him, presumably Gen’s aunt, agrees.

            “Who is she?” Penelope asks, increasingly frustrated.

            “Oh come on, Penny, that’s Aunt Dia!” Gen exclaims.

            “Ah, Gen, what Penny’s trying to ask,” a man who can only be Neutral Dave attempts to mediate but the Eddisians easily steamroll over him.

            “ _Eugenides_ , stop playing word games and give me a straight answer – and if you make a pun, I swear to god – ”

            “I don’t know what you’re so confused about!” Gen throws up his hands in elaborate surrender, “You know everyone here.”

            “I don’t know _her_ ,” finally she gives up on politeness and indicates Irene.

            “I told you, I’m bringing my roommate! I told you ahead of time!” 

            “Hello,” Irene attempts a greeting before the sibling flare up can turn into a sibling meltdown.

            “ _That’s_ your roommate?!” 

            “There’s no need to be rude,” Helen cuts through the conversation like a hot knife through butter, softly, easily and in a way that brooks no argument, “Gen, I see you’re up to your tricks.” 

            “I have no idea what you mean,” he smiles sunnily, “Where’s Sophos?”

            “He’s coming in tomorrow, he had to work.”

            “At his _internship_?” an eyebrow wiggle that has Irene and Helen shaking their heads almost in sync.

            “Yes.”

            “Because you’re a cougar?”

            “ _Gen.”_

“You scored a younger man, Helen. You had to rob a cradle to do it, but you should know, I’m very proud of you.” 

            Helen is giving Gen the fond look that says ‘I don’t know why I put up with you but I love you and if you don’t shut up in the next five minutes I will knock you unconscious and then punch myself in the face’. It’s a surprisingly communicative look; and one that Gen receives fairly regularly.

            “Irene, it’s lovely to meet you,” Helen tries again, pointedly turning her attention away from Gen, which Irene knows from experience is a very dangerous thing to do under any circumstances, “I’m Gen’s cousin, Helen.”

            “Hello, a pleasure to meet you. I’m Doctor Irene Attolia, Gen’s roommate.” Irene says with pointed (in Gen’s direction) charm-school-girl polish.

            “How very polished and scripted, General Hospital,” Gen remarks unhelpfully, “it was like you were a robot for a second there.” 

            Irene considers stepping on his foot but instead opts to just level a Look at him that has been known to stop grown men in their tracks. And in the heart-failure way, not the heart-eyes way.

            Gen must be defective, because he just seems amused and flattered by the attention.

            “Does anyone want more to eat?” Aunt Dia interrupts the awkward silence with a bowl of mashed potatoes.

            “Sure,” Gen says, pulling up a chair next to Helen and gesturing for Irene to follow. He holds out a plate snatched from the stack at the end of the table, “Load me up,” he throws a glance over his shoulder, “I’ve got the library again, right?”

            “Of course you do,” Helen reassures him.

            “Because no one wants to sleep on a fold-out couch in a room full of dusty books,” Uncle Ed grunts.

            “There is that,” Helen has to agree.

            “Rude. I like my library.”

            “ _You’re_ sleeping on the couch in your library’s other room,” Aunt Dia says and the ‘young man’ may not have been tacked onto the end of the sentence, but is strongly implied.

            “What?” Gen says around a mouthful of potatoes.

            “Chew your food,” Magnus chastises him.

            Irene settles uncertainly onto the chair beside Gen. He offers her a bowl of peas and carrots and a plate to put them on. She stares at his casually proprietary grip on the serving dishes and the moment stretches, Gen clearly committed to offering her food that isn’t his to offer and her waiting to see if he’ll cave and put them back where they belong.

            “Just take the peas, dear,” Aunt Dia advises, “He does this every year.”           

            Irene shoots Gen another hard look and he gives her a sunny smile. She takes the damn peas.

            “Why am I sleeping on the couch?” Gen asks, snagging a pork chop and his own spoonful of peas.

            “Your guest gets the bed; it’s only polite,” Aunt Dia says primly. 

            “If we’d known you were bringing someone she’d have her own room,” Uncle Ed shrugs, “But we’re full up this year. Everyone’s coming in for Christmas.”

            “I thought Ariadne was in Hawaii.”

            “Everyone but Ari,” Uncle Ed admits, “But everyone else – ”

            “- Plus the children,” Aunt Dia supplements.

            Helen shakes her head; “I told you, just stick a bunch of sleeping bags in the living room. Tell them it’s an adventure. That worked on us when we were kids.”

            “You and I remember that very differently,” Gen says flatly.

            “Oh you can’t still be mad about that,” Penny flicks her fork dismissively.

            “EVERY MORNING, I GOT DOGPILED BY A PACK OF GIANTS,” Gen protests.

            “And one morning you zipped Temenus into his sleeping bag and rolled him outside. He woke up in a snowdrift,” Helen reminds him.

            “It wasn’t just Tem,” Penny points out, “Everyone got it that year.”

            Gen grins a Cheshire cat grin, “That was a good year.”

            “Yeah, for you,” Helen nudges him with her elbow.

            Gen smirks into his peas.

            Irene focuses on cutting her pork chop into small, individual pieces and dipping each delicately into the puddle of honey mustard on her plate. There’s something about the family banter, a bubble of warmth she isn’t quite inside of. She doesn’t want to interrupt and burst it.

            “Where are the kids?” Gen asks Penny; attacking his food like Irene has been starving him (they stopped for coffee three times, lunch twice and milkshakes once, she doesn’t know where all that food goes on that skinny body, she really doesn’t).

            “They had chicken nuggets earlier and are watching Rudolph in the den,” Dave explains.

            “Chicken nuggets? Shaped like dinosaurs?” Gen seems intrigued, “Irene, we need to get some.”

            “No.”

            “Why not?”

            “They won’t fit in the freezer.”

            “You don’t know that.”

            “I do know that.”

            “How?”

            “Because you bought three gallons of ice cream the last time the bodega had a sale and now there isn’t room for the ice tray.”

            Gen pauses, considering this, “Oh yeah. I forgot.”

            Irene raises an eyebrow, “You were supposed to get cold medicine. You forgot that too.”

            Gen pouts at her, “You let me shop with a fever.”

            “Forgive me for going to the hospital, where they pay me to save lives, when you had the sniffles,” Irene says dryly.

            “Apology accepted,” Gen says brightly, spearing another bite of pork chop.

            Irene decides not to mention that working at the bodega in question was one of Gen’s million part-time jobs and she’d told him that morning not to go in to work if his fever came back. She was his roommate, not his nanny. He can do what he wants.

            “I can’t believe you guys are eating pork chops when you could have chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs,” Gen says.

            Oh, right, what Gen wants is ridiculous 99.99% of the time. His family seems to know this about him already, the comment only eliciting shaking heads and wry smiles all around.

            The table’s discussion shifts like a current, little whirlpools of side conversation popping up around them as Gen and Irene apply themselves to their dinners. The tap of a heel against her ankle drags Irene’s attention away from her pieces of pork chop and over to her roommate, whose eyes flash with a smirking smile just for her, as if they’re both in a joke she hasn’t heard the punch line to yet. She raises an eyebrow back at him and the silent, laughing crinkles in the corners of his eyes deepen.

            Incorrigible.

…

            Aunt Dia shows them to a set of rooms that must be the lodge’s library, stopping by the hall closet to pick up an armful of pillows, towels and blankets. “Bathroom’s down the hall, there should be enough towels for both of you. If you need more, Gen knows where to find them – don’t even think about stealing all my linens before your siblings get here, Eugenides. Now, Irene, dear, you’ll be in the inner room, the couch is all folded out and ready for you. _You_ ,” a sharp-eyed look at Gen, “Can pick a sofa in the outer room. I’ve got plenty of sheets and blankets here for you, you’ll be nice and cozy.”

            “Exiled to the couch,” Gen grumbles.

            “You’re a smart boy, I know you know how to pick up a phone and let your uncle and I know you’ll be bringing a guest. Somehow this knowledge clearly escaped you, however.”

            Gen pouts at Irene as if she can somehow solve this problem. She mouths ‘serves you right’ at him and he looks simultaneously scandalized at her callousness and delighted at her playing along with him.

            “And Eugenides,” Aunt Dia shoots him a severe look, “If you steal one more Christmas ornament this year, I will _know_ and there will be _consequences_.” 

            Gen smiles a beatific ‘who me?’ smile but Aunt Dia looks unimpressed.

            “There’s some empty drawers in the built-in shelving for your clothes, and a closet in the hall if you need to hang anything up,” Aunt Dia fusses around the room for a moment, closing the blinds and dropping off their designated heap of linens, before returning to Gen and Irene, “If you two need anything, I’m sure Gen will feel free to get it for you,” an arch look Gen’s way, “So I’ll be seeing you in the morning.” She surprises Irene by sweeping her nephew into a quick hug and kissing his temple, “It’s so good to see you, sleep well, sweetheart.”

            Gen tolerates the attention for a moment before trying to squirm away, “Yeah, goodnight, sleep well,” he says awkwardly, patting his aunt’s shoulder as she shakes her head with a patient look his direction.

            “Good night, Irene,” Dia tells her, ignoring Gen’s flailing, “We’re glad to have you.”

            Oddly, Irene thinks she might actually mean that.

            “Thank you,” she says, and she doesn’t want to examine how deeply she feels the sentiment.

            With one last smile Aunt Dia exits, leaving Gen to flop backwards onto a couch, knees caught on the arm, feet dangling above the floor.

            “So,” he says, tucking an arm behind his head and craning his neck so he can look up at her, “What Christmas tree ornament should I steal this year?”

            It’s so _Gen_ Irene finds herself just laughing helplessly.

…

            The next morning begins with a bang and an ungodly shriek. Irene comes racing out of her room, throwing on a bathrobe as she goes, to find a trio of small children piled on top of the lump that was once Gen’s sleeping body on the couch, the door to the library – the source of the banging, still swaying on its hinges behind them. Gen is yelling some very creative Latin epithets as the children try to pin him down.

            “Get him, get Uncle Gen!” shouts the eldest, clearly the leader of the pack.

            “Uncle Gen! Uncle Gen!” squeaks the youngest; who just seems to be enjoying sitting on Gen and smacking him with tiny fists.

            “Good morning,” Irene says as sweetly as she can manage, “enjoying yourself?”

            “Not at all,” Gen grumps, “Get off, you miscreants!”

            “No way, we’re supposed to bring you to breakfast!” the medium-sized one declares.

            “No, no, no! Rawr!” the youngest supplements, imitating a very small dinosaur on the last word.

            “I can’t go to breakfast, if I’m pinned down by tiny _animals_ ,” Gen points out – not incorrectly, “Irene, help me!” 

            This distracts the oldest child at least, her head pops up over the back of the couch, amber-brown eyes zeroing in on where Irene stands, still in her bathrobe and pajamas. “Who are you?”

            This draws the attention of the other two; whose heads join their sister’s. “Yeah, who are you?”

            “Are you Uncle Gen’s girlfriend?”

            “Is your name Irene?”

            “Are you here for Christmas?”

            The youngest quickly loses interest in scrutinizing Irene and drops down to sit more firmly on his uncle with an emphatic dinosaur “Rawr.”

            It’s definitely too early for this. Irene blinks at the rapid-fire questions and wishes for coffee. “My name is Irene,” she clarifies, “I’m your uncle’s roommate – ”

            “Who is _not helping me_ ,” Gen says pointedly.

            “You’re a grown man; you can handle a few children,” she tells him, making the children giggle, “And yes, I am here for Christmas.”

            The girl narrows her eyes speculatively at her, but seems satisfied with her answers so far. “Okay,” she finally declares with a definitive nod and Irene sees the ghost of what must be Penny in the turn of her nose and decisive tilt of her chin.

            Her brother takes his cue from her because he nods as well and they refocus on harassing their uncle.

            Gen, who had been playing dead while his niece stared down his roommate, roars to life like a zombie from a movie, sitting up with a dramatic jerk, scattering children like leaves. They all shriek and tumble away from him, Gen flipping over the back of the couch and roaring like a monster, “I’m gonna GET YOU!” 

            Irene retreats to her half of the library, pulling the pocket door closed behind her. With the children (Gen included) distracted she has the chance to dress for breakfast.

…

            At breakfast, Irene realizes she really needn’t have bothered to get dressed or do her makeup. Most of the family slumped around the kitchen, breakfast nook, and dining room, are in various states of disheveled, pajama-clad, and half-asleep, with the exception of Penelope, who’s dressed in athletic leggings and a thermal top.

            “I’ll just have a little coffee before my run, Dave’s already out warming up,” Penny is telling Uncle Ed, who grunts and gestures at the Keurig coffee maker without looking up from his newspaper.

            “Who’s wrangling your kids?” Helen asks, wearing a college sweatshirt several sizes too big over flannel pajama pants that pool around her feet, “Normally they’re – ”

            “Urchin delivery! Get your fresh street urchins! Breathe in that nasty urchin scent! That’s authenticity right there, folks!” Gen comes trudging into the kitchen, one child clinging to his neck, skinny pajama-clad legs locked around his ribcage, another latched onto one ankle, a third dragging on the opposite wrist.

            Irene stands off to the side, coffee in hand, trying not to feel out of place in her forest green turtleneck sweater, matching earring and necklace set, and dark skinny jeans.

            Gen, for one, has not bothered to change out of his pajamas. He’s still wearing his flannel pants, almost identical to his cousin Helen’s, and a t-shirt with a penguin in centurion armor and a crown of laurels.

            An ‘emperor penguin’. Irene nearly chokes on her coffee.

            “Get off, urchins,” he instructs his charges, “I want my breakfast.”

            “There’s a chafing dish with scrambled eggs on the counter, Irene,” Helen tells her, “And a casserole dish with bacon next to it.”

            “Bacon,” Gen, children scampering off to pester Magnus and Uncle Ed, perks up, “the kids didn’t mention bacon.”

            “Sorry Gen, nothing but bread crusts and gruel for you,” Helen says with a straight face, “Irene, there’s French toast too, if my cousin doesn’t get to it first.”

            “French toast is for winners, Helen!” Gen shouts, already bounding for the kitchen, all of the morning’s grogginess gone in the face of food.

            Helen rolls her eyes, “You’ll have to fight him for it.”

            Irene risks a slight smile, “I think I can handle it.”

…

            The French toast is cut into Christmas-themed shapes. Gen is biting the wings off a bread and egg angel when she gets into the kitchen. Irene isn’t sure how she ended up in a Hallmark movie, but at least the food is good.

…

            The rest of the morning passes in a whirlwind of activity. Penny and Dave return from jogging pink-cheeked, dusted with snow, and with Helen’s three newly arrived brothers on their heels. The young men are rowdy and jostling each other companionably despite being weighed down with luggage, shouting greetings to their parents over their cousins’ shoulders.

            Gen makes himself scarce when his cousins (all taller and heavier-built than him, Irene observes) start asking who’s arrived at top volume.

            “Gen’s around somewhere,” Helen gestures vaguely.

            “Little twerp, we’ll get him later,” the eldest (or perhaps simply biggest) declares jovially with a heavy-handed slap to one of his brothers’ shoulders.

             “Payback for last year,” one of them agrees.

            Irene doesn’t know what exactly happened last year but she gets the feeling Gen heartily deserves whatever he has coming to him.

            Next to arrive is Helen’s boyfriend Sophos, who stumbles into the middle of lunch, blushes fire engine red when everyone in the room turns to stare at him, and offers to come back later if convenient.

            “Sure, go for it,” Gen says cheerfully and Helen aims a vicious kick at his shin under the table before standing up and welcoming her boyfriend with a kiss and a “Grab a plate, we just got started.”

            Sophos slides into the spot next to Helen. Gen, on her other side, leans around her to offer Sophos a serving dish. “Chicken?” 

            Sophos gives him an immensely tired look, and takes the chicken, “Good to see you too, buddy.” 

            Gen’s eldest brother, Stenides, wanders in as lunch is winding down, absent-mindedly picks up a plate and piles it high with the leftovers Aunt Dia is moments away from wrapping up for the fridge. Turning to face the room, a vague smile on his face, he says, “Hello, all,” with a little wave and settles in across from Irene, next to Dave.

            Irene studies his face as she finishes her own chicken and dumplings. There isn’t necessarily a strong resemblance between this man and Gen, but some of that may be the eleven years age difference. At thirty-four, Sten has Gen’s narrow build, but it teeters closer to being simply ‘thin’ rather than Gen’s lean and wiry frame. His height, more comparable to their sisters, only emphasizes this small difference. The brothers share the same black hair, but Sten’s overall complexion is somewhat lighter, probably from spending the bulk of his time indoors bent over tiny, delicate mechanisms. His nose is longer and his face narrower than Gen’s, his brows black and straight, without Gen’s wild mobility. But the two do share the same sharp features and glittering, intelligent eyes, even if Sten is playing the absentminded professor over a plate of chicken and dumplings.

            “Sten!” Gen chirps, “Did you bring me any toys?”

            “Did you bring me any books?” the eldest Eddisian fires back and Gen grins.

            “Better, I brought you the latest draft of my thesis.”

            Sten mock-groans, “Very well, bring on your Latin and your semicolons.”

            “They’re better than dashes.”

            “What’s even better are short, to-the-point sentences.”

            Gen sticks his tongue out at his brother instead of coming up with a clever rejoinder. Irene and Sten share a knowing glance over the rims of their water glasses. He probably doesn’t know who she is, but he seems to sense another member of the ‘Eugenides Eddisian survivors’ club.

            They learn Cassie, her wife, and children have arrived when the horde of children running through the snow outside nearly doubles and another heap of presents plus two new present-wrappers join the bulk of the adults in the living room in wrapping gifts while the kids are out of the way. (Gen is superbly talented at gift-wrapping due to working at department stores during the holiday rush the past several years. This of course means he contributes nothing and spends the bulk of his time sticking bows on Irene’s head when she’s not looking.)

             A few hours later, Temenus’ arrival is heralded by him wandering into the living room, casually hauling Gen along with him, his younger brother in a headlock, and asks when dinner is. Gen’s response is a grumbled, “Never, for you. It’s bed without supper until death. You don’t need to get any more giant and annoying.”

            As Temenus is actually shorter than both their older sisters and Sten, most of his mass comes from his broad shoulders and vaguely tank-like build. He and Gen are actually somewhat close in height, with Temenus only having a few inches on his younger brother.

            Temenus just chuckles, his laughter turning into a yelp of rage when Gen bites the arm pinning him in place, slips free of his brother’s hold and darts away. Temenus tears after him and the rest of the Eddisians all share similar knowing looks as if to say this game of cat and mouse – more like a game of ‘enraged stampeding bull and cat who keeps antagonizing him’, really – will go on for some time.

            “Who’s left?” Irene asks Helen an hour or so before dinner. They’re in the dining room taping up homemade garlands lovingly if sloppily crafted by the youngest family members while Aunt Dia and Penelope bicker about dinner the kitchen.

            Helen opens her mouth to answer, when the door, right on time, cracks open, letting in a gust of cold air and two snowy figures.

            “Hello in the house!” calls the taller of the two as they knock the snow from their boots and unwrap layers of coats and scarves.

            “Hey Iris!” Helen calls, teetering on her stepstool as she leans back to wave at her cousin.

            “Merry Christmas, Aunt Helen!” calls the smaller figure, a girl around ten or eleven years old, with long, golden brown hair and twinkling, mischievous eyes.

            “Is that Cleopatra I hear?” Gen, who must have given Temenus and their rampaging cousins the slip, calls from the grand staircase.

            “Gen!” the little girl twinkles up at him.

            “What? Helen’s ‘Aunt Helen’ and I’m just ‘Gen’?” he squawks mock-indignantly.

            “What? I’m supposed to start pretending you’re old and dignified now?” Cleo parrots back at him, “Give me a break,” she says teasingly, voice lilting like she’s quoting someone or something they both know.

            “Your mother is teaching you bad habits, I see,” Gen says haughtily as he slides down the bannister.

            “Verbal irony!” Cleo yelps, tugging at her mother’s sleeve, “ _That’s_ verbal irony! I was trying to explain it in the car!”

            “Your uncle being extremely unsafe on the staircase railing?” Iris asks archly.

            Irene is sure the eyeroll Cleo gives her mother is truly epic; Irene can hear it in her voice, “ _Mom._ ”

            Gen dismounts the bannister with a flourish, “Applause welcome, cash donations encouraged,” he says, bowing extravagantly.

            “I’d sell you out for one corn chip,” Cleo tries to say flatly, but her voice is wobbling like she’s trying not to laugh.

            “Ugh,” now it’s Gen’s turn to roll his eyes as he yanks the Santa hat that’s somehow appeared on his head since Irene last saw him off and plops it on his niece’s golden brown curls, “Who let you onto the internet? You’ve been corrupted, you learned _memes_.”

            “You keep sending me gifs!” Cleo protests.

            “Blame your mother for that one, she got you a smartphone. What kind of middle-schooler needs a smartphone?” Gen huffs, “When I was your age – ”

            “Dinosaurs roamed the earth?” Cleo asks with an innocent eyelash-bat.

            “No, that was when your _Grandad_ was your age. Keep up, Princess. I just walked uphill both ways to get to school. And we used smoke signals instead of texting. And it snowed. All the time. When I was walking to school. Uphill. Both ways.”

            “Did you have chalkboards instead of iPads?”

            Gen mock-gasps, “How did you _know_? And really, the chalkboards were a new thing. When your mom was young it was parchment. And when Uncle Sten was little we were still on clay tablets.”

            “Wow, that’s a lot of history you just sped through,” Iris observes dryly.

            “I’m an immortal deity, Iris, I’ve seen a lot,” Gen says with a completely straight face.

            Iris shakes her head indulgently, “I’m still waiting for a lighting bolt to come out of the sky and strike you dead for the stuff you say sometimes.”

            “Hey,” Gen huffs, “Let’s not tempt fate, or trigger-happy goddesses.”

            “Not gods?”

            “Oh, please, it’ll be a woman who gets me in the end, you’ll see.” He has the audacity to wink at Irene when he says this and she just raises a cool eyebrow in his general direction for lack of better response.

            He grins because of course he does.

            “Come on, girls, our more gorilla-esque relations are happily distracted attempting to put together Aunt Dia’s ridiculous ‘easy-assemble’ reusable tree monstrosity for decorating tomorrow and I have it on good authority there are cookies in the kitchen,” and with that, Iris and Cleo are whisked away to raid Aunt Dia’s cookie supply, leaving their luggage and dripping coats behind in the entryway.

            Irene and Helen exchange glances.

            “Is Gen usually this…manic?” Irene asks. She feels like she should know the answer to this question but she’s already struggling to reconcile all the different versions of Gen she’s seen just in the short time living with him. The Gen who ambushes Costis with snowballs and whines when she changes the channel and makes bizarre, convoluted schemes instead of communicating directly is already at odds with the Gen who sat quietly through her story the night after the charity ball and held her when she needed a hug and a friend more than anything in the world.  And all those Gens clash with the man who sits on her floor, surrounded by papers and books, and disappears into his own clever world of dead languages and forgotten heroes. She can’t imagine any one of those is the ‘real’ Gen, anymore than any of the many faces she wears all day are the ‘real’ Irene, but she wonders. She wonders what he allows her to see.

            Helen shrugs, “He has his highs and lows. I think it’s more extreme when there’s a lot of people and excitement around. He likes to be the center of things. He’s always…” she pauses, thinking, “He’s a performer,” she finally settles on, “He likes showing off, he likes the attention and the applause – or the frustrated bellowing,” she chuckles, “But even Gen gets tired sometimes.”

            Even Gen gets tired sometimes. Irene thinks of that strange, suspended second when she found Gen asleep on the floor; surrounded by his work and shook him awake. The one where he looked almost afraid, and deeply, profoundly weary.

            She nods, unable to put that split second into words Helen might understand, and pulls from a different part of her own experience instead. “Everyone gets tired of being in-character all the time.”

            Helen tips her head to the side, regarding Irene with dark, warm eyes. Gen might say he isn’t kind, and maybe he isn’t, but he and Helen have surprisingly similar eyes sometimes. “You know, that’s exactly right,” she says, “I didn’t have the words for it but that’s exactly right.”

            Irene nods, but looks away, unable to hold that warm gaze for too long. Instead, she clears her throat and focuses on the garlands.


	3. We Fell Into These Arms But Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Costis never treated me like this,” Gen grumbles into his lettuce-less sandwich.   
> “Costis picked you up and threw you in a snowdrift five days ago,” Irene reminds him.   
> “Yeah, but he’d buy me a cookie.”   
> “Maybe if you were stabbed.”   
> “If I was stabbed he’d better bring me more than a goddamn cookie,” Gen grumps.   
> “LANGUAGE,” Aunt Dia barks from the kitchen and Cleo cackles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a gift for my soul-sibling and bff, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR!
> 
> To everyone else THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU ALL!

**Part III**

            Gen doesn’t seem tired at dinner at first. The cousins are loud and rambunctious, Uncle Ed, showing off more lung capacity and Irene expected, bellowing right along with them. But Gen holds his own, pitching his voice just right so certain witty asides make their way to their intended targets’ ears just enough times to both infuriate the objects of Gen’s antagonism while giving Gen himself plausible deniability. Penny unsuccessfully tries to deter Gen from his admittedly dangerous game, but her interference only seems to spur him on.

            “Sten,” Penny finally pleads, “Do something about your brother!”

            “Which one?” Sten asks vaguely, winking at Gen over the platter of corn on the cob.

            “Oh Sten, really,” Penny huffs as Cassie obviously and heavy-handedly changes the subject, steamrolling over Penny’s protests.

            “We’ve started work on the old castle.”

            “Really?” the abandoned place we used to walk past as kids?” Iris asks.

            “Yep,” Cassie says smugly.

            “It’s a really beautiful old home,” her wife, Kiki, agrees and that corner of the table is distracted with talk of home improvement and house-flipping.

            “They need their own HGTV show,” Gen nods at his sister and sister-in-law, “It’d be amazing.”

            Considering an honest compliment from Gen is like a coal-mine-loving canary – rare and possibly dangerous – Irene is a bit surprised. “Really?”

            Gen shrugs, “I’d watch it.” He seems to be getting tired, Irene thinks. His eyes are growing a little distant and his shoulders are tense like having this many people and this much noise all crammed around one dinner table is a bit too much. Irene may not know Gen as well as some of those present, but she has a sneaking suspicion this is a sign Gen will either attempt escape as soon as possible, or pull some drastic prank just to make some distance between himself and everyone else before he suffocates.

            “I can’t imagine this,” Irene says abruptly, just quietly enough that there’s a good chance only Gen will hear.

            “Hmm?” he looks at her, eyes still vague, but a little focus sneaking back in.

            “Growing up like this. Family dinners with everyone crammed in like this. All talking.”

            “Do you like it?” he asks, “All the people?”

            Irene shakes her head, “It’s not the people. My parents had people over to our place all the time. It’s,” she waves a hand vaguely, “The talking.” She hopes he understands. She hopes this brings him back from wherever he was wandering off to in his head.

            He nods, slowly, “Talking to people is hard.”

            She quirks a smile, “Talking at them is easy.”

            His eyes crinkling knowingly, “You’re not wrong,” then he blinks, “you constantly surprise me, General Hospital.”

            She coughs around an involuntary laugh, “ _I_ surprise _you_?” 

            He nods, lips quirking up at the corners, “Yep.” 

            She shakes her head, “I always knew you were nuts.”

            He snorts, and makes a grand but limited gesture, “Can’t you see? It runs in the family.”

            Magnus, who is sitting across from them, snorts, “Don’t point at me, boy. I’m not blood-related to you lunatics.”

            It’s enough to make Gen laugh out loud. Irene feels good about that, at least.

…

            They pile into the living room to rejoin the children, who had their dinner earlier (Cleo had scrunched up her nose at that, saying “Do I really have to eat with the babies?” continuing a pre-existing campaign to sit at the grown-up table – a campaign Gen attempts to dissuade her from on account of the fact that there are no dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets at the grownup table). Dave pops Jim Carrey’s version of _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas_ into the DVD player and they all settle in to watch. Gen sits on the floor and Irene automatically settles down next to him.

            “You can have a spot on the couch, dear,” Aunt Dia offers, “Since you’re a guest.”

            “Yeah, we keep Gen on the floor for easy kicking,” one of Helen’s brothers says, shoving Gen’s shoulder with his foot.

            “Careful, Pylaster,” Gen says, “One of these days I might bite that foot and then where would you be?”

            “Probably getting vaccinated for rabies,” mutters one of Pylaster’s brothers, earning him a shove.

            “I don’t mind,” Irene hears herself saying; even though she vividly remembers telling Gen only last week that she ‘bought a couch so I don’t have to sit on the floor to watch television’, “We sit on the floor a lot at home.”

            “Aww,” Kiki says, “that’s sweet.”

            Irene isn’t sure why it’s sweet; Gen just has a bad habit of making blanket forts out of her color-coordinated throw pillows instead of using them for their intended purpose.

            “Shut up, Kiki,” Gen says easily.

            “Your brother has terrible manners,” Kiki tells Cassie, a laugh in her voice.

            “I know, you’d think he was raised in the woods,” Cassie shakes her head mock-despairingly.

            “Guys!” one of the children says imperiously, “It’s _movie time_. So we should be _starting_ the _movie_.” 

            “What do you say?” Dave prompts his kid.

            The kid ponders. “Please?”

            “And…?”

            “Can we start the movie, please?” the child asks, although the words run together into something more like ‘canwestartthemovieplease’.

            “Yes, we may start the movie,” Penny says, reinforcing one last bit of good grammar while she can, “Uncle Ed?”

            “Right-o,” he flourishes the remote, “Everybody ready?”

            The children chorus back a hearty “YEAH!” and without further ado, he presses play.

…

            It’s rare for Irene to feel comfortable in a crowded room. She’s accustomed to it, certainly. Hospitals are simply one crowded room after another, full of people who need help ,or leadership, or in the case of certain pharmaceutical reps, a swift kick in the head. But rarely, if ever, does she feel anything other than professional, competent and in control in a room full of people.

            Here, though, here might be the exception.

            Gen’s shoulder is warm and solid against hers because even if he’s smaller than his enormous cousins he’s still lean and strong. And the room isn’t truly quiet, there are small child voices asking obvious or less than obvious questions like “why is the Grinch green?” and “how is it that there are tiny Whos and normal-sized Whos? Are they different evolutionary variants?” (that last one came from Cleo, whose questions remind Irene of a certain quick-witted roommate of hers). Sophos’ voice is an unexpected quiet rumble as he answers the call of youthful curiosity and Irene wonders if Helen has ever contemplated children of her own. And the adults periodically interject with their own commentary – Cassie clearly has some thoughts on the use of female archetypes and Kiki says “I know they’re probably supposed to be two old spinsters or something, but am I the only person who wants the Grinch to have two elderly lesbian moms?” making the whole room chuckle and chime in agreement. But there’s still something quiet about being in a dark room with a flickering screen and a well-worn story and people you want to share it with.

            Gen is unusually quiet himself and Irene thinks he might be leaning a little bit more heavily on her shoulder than usual. She wonders if he’s tired too. If he feels the creeping warmth of a room full of people you know and like sharing an old beloved story together.

            The lights twinkle around the window outside and Irene Attolia is warm.

…

            By the time the credits roll the youngest of the children are sound asleep, but Cleo and her oldest cousins are still awake, and Atticus is turning to Gen with eager eyes. “Is it story time now?”

            “Aren’t you a little big for story time with Uncle Gen?” he asks archly, a teasing twinkle in his eye.

            “Noooo,” Atticus shakes his head vigorously, “Never!”   
            “Never! Really? Well I find that hard to believe,” Gen says very seriously, “Now, you have to prove you’re still young enough at heart for one of my stories.”

            “We’re young, we’re young!” Atticus and his cousin Layla chant insistently, voices dipping into whispers when Dave shushes them gently, picking up Layla’s younger siblings from where they snooze on the floor very carefully.

            “Hmmm. Do you…believe in magic?”

            “Yes, yes!”

            “Do you believe in Christmas magic?”

            “Yes, _yes_!” 

            “Do you believe words are magic too?”

            “Yes!”

            “How about stories? Are those magic?”

            “Yes! Yes!” 

            “Where do I find magic?”

            “Everywhere!” they insist, even Cleo getting drawn into the excitement.

            “Very well then,” Gen grins, “Come to my library and I will tell you one,” he flourishes a single finger, “ _One_ of my Christmas stories and then I’ll read you a chapter of _A Christmas Carol_ and then it’s off to be with little monsters and urchins, understand?”

            “Yes, Uncle Gen.”

            “Right,” he nods, “Away we go then,” and they take off scampering down the hall, Atticus, Aelia, Layla and even Cleo, taking up the rear at a more sedate pre-teen pace.

            “Hey, Cleo,” Gen says to her, “I know you think you’re all grown up and everything, but take my advice, run after them while you’re still little enough to use it as an excuse.”

            She gives him the ghost of a smile and picks up the pace a little; movements still a tiny bit self-conscious. Gen sighs in her wake. “When the hell did she grow up?”

            Iris shrugs, “She’s eleven. Things change. Remember – ”

            Gen snorts and shakes his head, standing up with a stretch, “Iris, when I was eleven, I was getting into fights I couldn’t win and shoplifting everything that wasn’t nailed down. I’m aware how things change when you’re eleven.”

            Irene blinks; she hadn’t known that.

            “It just seems so much younger when I think about it now,” he shrugs, “Maybe I’m getting old.”

            Iris snorts, “Gen, the day you grow old is the day the sun falls out of the sky.”

            He spreads his hands, “Maybe, maybe not. Who knows. I’m an enigma wrapped in a crepe. With chocolate fudge sauce.”

            “You’re ridiculous,” his sister swings a pillow at him, “Go face your adoring fans before they all fall asleep.” 

            With one last tired grin, Gen scampers off.

            “That boy is my hero,” Iris says matter-of-factly, “But I swear he’s as crazy as a cuckoo clock sometimes.”

            Helen snorts, “Haven’t we all said that at some point?”

            “Mmm,” Iris agrees, “haven’t we.” 

…

            “You’re pretty good at that,” Irene observes when the children have gone to bed and the night has grown soft and dark around them.

            “You’ll have to be a smidge more specific, dear,” Gen says lightly from the other room. The lights are off but the door between them is open and mountain moonlight slips in through the slats of the blinds in the library, painting everything in silver. Irene wonders if this is what sleepovers are supposed to feel like when you’re very young and your world can be contained in four walls and a limitless imagination.

            Irene could say a lot of things here, she’s seen sides and talents of Gen’s in the past twenty-four hours she’s never witnessed before, but she settles for the easy answer. “Storytelling.  Reading aloud.” 

            “Ah,” Gen pauses a moment, as if uncertain what to do with the compliment now that he knows what it is. “Thank you,” he finally settles on, tone awkward and a little disconcerted, “My mom taught me. She used to tell stories all the time.” 

            “Good ones?” Irene asks, feeling unexpectedly soft and whimsical.

            “The very best,” Gen says, voice at once cocky and sincere.

            Irene smiles at that; imagining a smaller Eugenides in place of tonight’s children, probably wearing absurd reindeer-themed pajamas, if his adult taste is anything to go by.  She doesn’t know what his mother looked like but she feels like he must take after her rather strongly. “Good,” she says softly, “That’s good.” 

            Gen laughs, but it’s a soft, giving sort of laugh, “Glad we’ve met with your approval, General Hospital.”

            “Your references are dated.”

            “And you need to go to sleep or I’ll wake up first and get all the French toast tomorrow.”

            “Well, we can’t have that.”

            Irene falls asleep smiling.

…

            Gen does not get all the French toast the next morning, his cousins ransack the breakfast spread before he can finish making off with the rest of it. Irene enters the kitchen to what looks like half a football team elbowing each other out of the way of the eggs and bacon. Gen is perched on a kitchen counter in the corner, wedged in with the cabinets and clutching a plate. He’s kicking fuzzy-socked feet and wearing a stretched-out t-shirt that reads ‘I, for One, Like Roman Numerals’ in papyrus script. His pajama pants are dotted with sprigs of cartoonish mistletoe and his fuzzy socks are striped red and green. There are pom-poms on the heels.

            Irene, on the other hand, is not wearing pajamas. After spending an embarrassing amount of time hovering over her luggage, wondering if she should stay in her silk pajamas, put a cardigan over them, switch her real pajamas out for a pair of soft lounge pants and a slouchy sweater, or just skip it and put on her real clothes. She ends up skipping it because she knows if she wears her pajamas she’ll feel insecure the whole time and if she wears lounge pants and a sweater she’ll feel like a fake. She’s willing to feel a little silly in her ensemble compared to all the other ultra-relaxed Eddisians for the sake of not spending the whole meal fiddling with her hem and hoping her chest doesn’t wobble too gelatinously.

            She ends up wearing a grey knit top, a wine-red cardigan and grey skinny jeans. A subtle touch of makeup and a swipe of lip gloss and she feels close to human.

            Irene slips into the kitchen, watching as Gen heckles his cousins from the safety of the kitchen counter. One look at the hulking giants around the kitchen table and Irene doesn’t feel nearly as self-conscious about being fully dressed. All of Gen’s cousins are wearing…hockey jerseys? Hockey jerseys from pretty much every major team, both professional and collegiate, but hockey jerseys nonetheless.

            Even Helen and Cassandra are decked out in hockey regalia, making Penelope the odd woman out in her lulu lemon thermal top and workout tights as she sips a suspiciously green smoothie from a blender cup. Everyone else is shoveling down eggs, bacon, and French toast at an alarming rate.

            “Sophos, where’s your jersey?” one of Helen’s brothers – Irene still can’t remember which is which – hollers as Sophos staggers downstairs, still wearing plaid pajama pants and a stretched-out graphic t-shirt.

            “Ugh, coffee,” Sophos grumbles, making grabby hands at the pot.

            “Say please,” Gen taunts, even as Irene, who is actually holding the coffee, rolls her eyes and passes it Sophos’ way.

            Sophos grumbles vaguely at Gen and takes the pot with a bright smile of gratitude to Irene, which rapidly sags back into just-woke-up-grogginess as soon as he looks away.

            “Traitor,” Gen grumbles at her, even as she sidles over to stand next to where his legs dangle off the countertop.

            “So what’s the deal with the hockey jerseys?” Irene asks under her breath, sipping her own coffee gratefully.

            “Family tradition,” Gen explains, equally sotto voce, “We always have a big family hockey game before Christmas eve. It’s lots of shouting and flailing and these idiots trying to flatten each other recreationally. I choose to abstain.”  

            “Whimp,” Temenus shouts good-naturedly from the table, not even looking away from his breakfast feast.

            “Just because I don’t want to become a Gen-pancake doesn’t mean I’m a whimp, it just means I have more tactical sense than the average brick,” Gen fires back around a mouthful of syrup-drenched French toast.

            “I’m not much for participating either,” Penelope observes dryly.

            “Yeah, because god forbid Neutral Dave find out you used to thump these idiots around for fun.”

            “Eugenides,” Penelope huffs.

            “You know no one actually _likes_ kale, right?” Gen says, gesturing dramatically at her green smoothie, “They all pretend to like the kale, they all _say_ they like the kale, they all _eat_ the kale, but really it’s just spinach’s shoddy second cousin.”

            “You know you can just say ‘kale’,” Helen points out, “You don’t have to include a ‘the’.”

            “I like kale,” Sophos mumbles.

            Gen rolls his eyes, “Of course you do, Soph. Of course you do.”

            “Leave Sophos alone,” Helen says chidingly.

            “Are you going to play this year, Gen?” Sten, nearly unrecognizable with his lanky form shrouded in a bulky hockey ensemble, asks.

            “Noooo, way,” Gen drags the words out, kicking his feet for emphasis, “I call being the referee.”

            “No,” Uncle Ed and Aunt Dia say at the same time.

            “What?” Gen turns big, dramatic, stricken eyes on his aunt and uncle.

            “I’ve told you, I’m not letting you referee again, not after the pile-up three years ago,” Ed says evenly.

            “Your uncle is referee,” Aunt Dia declares, “And Penny, Kiki and I are going to be working in the kitchen. So you can play or you can pout, but there will be no sitting on your butt, Eugenides.”

            “Count me in on kitchen crew,” Neutral Dave says, swooping down to peck his wife on the cheek, “After last year I’m not risking life and limb to play with these guys again.”

            “Wait, wait, wait,” Helen waves her hands, cutting off the chatter, “If I’m playing, and both my brothers, and Sten and Tem, _and_ Cass, and Sophos, and – wait, is Iris playing this year?”

            “Count me out, I’m with Gen, I don’t want to be a me-pancake,” Iris says lightly as she strides into the room, “ _I_ will be on emergency grocery duty. Because we always mange to run out of something we need.”

            “And there’s always something that slips my mind when I made the grocery list the first time!”

            “Or something catches fire,” Gen adds, like this is a perfectly typical thing to happen.

            “That only happens when we let _you_ in the kitchen,” Penelope points out archly.

            “Which isn’t happening this year, because you’re playing hockey with the cool kids,” Helen declares.

            “ _What_?” Gen squawks, “ _No_.”

            “Yes,” Helen says, “Because without you we don’t have even numbers.”

            Gen lets out a high-pitched whine of protest, “Make Uncle Ed play.”

            “Make Gen respect his elders,” Uncle Ed fires back.

            “Fine, make _Dave_ play,” Gen grumps.

            “No, I value my life,” Dave says serenely, sipping his own green smoothie.

            “Oh come on, you can’t value it that highly, you’re eating _liquid kale._ ”

            “Suit up, Gen,” Uncle Ed declares, “you’re playing hockey with your cousins.”

            Gen huffs and leans his forehead on the back of Irene’s shoulder. “Irene, help.”

            Irene pats his sleep-mussed dark hair, “No.”

            “You’re the worst.”

            “Save it for the rink.”

            “I hate you.”

            “No you don’t.”

            “I’m stealing your cat and leaving you.”

            “Good, less tinsel and cat hair to clean up.”

            “Bleh.”

            She pats his head again.

…

            Irene begs off helping in the kitchen to watch the opening passes of the hockey game. Helen and Sophos team up with Gen and Sten, because, as Iris says, bluntly ‘Gen and Sten need all the muscle Helen can give them’. Plus, Helen and her brothers seem to have some sort of family grudge match going on, and Tem and Gen’s cousins seem perfectly content to pummel him to their hearts’ content. Helen may very well be all that stands between Gen and becoming a pancake.

            Cass is on Tem and the cousins’ team mostly by default, but between her height and professional contractor muscles, she’s more than equal to their mass. Irene has to own, this doesn’t look good for comparatively short and slight Gen.

            Uncle Ed drops the puck and darts out of the way, both teams exploding into action at once. It’s an informal game, as Iris explains to Irene, with only four players on each team the game’s been stripped down to its most basic components. No fancy rules or positions, just ‘get the puck between the other team’s goal posts’. Also ‘no excessive violence’. Which. Irene isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean.

            “Watch Gen,” Iris tells her right before the puck hits the ice.

            Irene nods, not sure what to expect.

            The two teams slam into each other with a scrape and a screech of skates on ice, hockey sticks slapping hard and fast as they wrestle over the puck. Helen and Cass hold their own well, slamming shoulders into their brothers and cousins with a kind of aggressive glee. Sophos seems to be struggling, uncomfortable with his own height, reach and strength (he must have had some late growth spurts, Irene observes), he’s clumsy and awkward on the ice. Irene filters most of the struggle out, focusing, as Iris suggested, on Gen.

            Gen _flies_ across the ice, skate blades flashing brightly as he weaves and dodges nimbly between his broader family members, snatching the puck away while they’re distracted in the back and forth of the push and shove. He’s a flash of bright colors and dark hair slicing through the crowd, carving long furrows in the ice with each flick of his skates. He slams the puck into the makeshift goal and darts away as soon as Ed registers the score and shouts the new tally.

            Gen’s a whirlwind, burning across the ice in defiance of physics, and, frankly, good sportsmanship, as he pulls every dirty trick in the book to evade, avoid, and otherwise escape his opponents, who, by this time are out for blood.

            (When they do catch him, because no matter how unexpectedly nimble he is, he’s one small-ish person against a herd of giants on a relatively small iced-over pond, he goes flying across the rink and crashes painfully into Sophos, who has the good grace to topple of with him and cushion is fall.)

            Beside Irene, Magnus chuckles.

            Irene shoots a glance his way, “Magnus, I didn’t see you at breakfast.”

            “Ah, Sophos warned me about these louts and their, ah – ” on the ice, Helen shoulder-checks Temenus and sends him crashing into two of his teammates, they go down in a tangle, their combined muscle mass too heavy for their precarious balance. “- traditions,” Magnus concludes politely. “Helen is, of course, a lovely girl –” she’s grinning and her teeth are bloody from a bitten lip, Irene is suddenly pretty sure at least one of the breaks in the other woman’s nose is from this particular ‘tradition’, “But her family can be somewhat…”

            “Thugly?” Iris offers from Irene’s other side, laughing as Magnus’ face screws up like he wants to gently correct her but can’t think of a more politically correct term.

            “…Exuberant,” Magnus finishes weakly.

            Iris chuckles, “You should see them play rugby in the summer. It’s a bloodbath.”

            Irene shakes her head, “I can’t imagine Gen playing rugby.”

            On the ice Gen has stolen the puck again and Sten is trying to shield him as he darts across the makeshift rink.

            “Oh no, he’d be slaughtered in two seconds,” Iris acknowledges, “He does well in anything where he can use his speed and agility. For being such a shit-stirrer he actually hates violence.”

            Magnus snorts, “That didn’t stop him from taking on three louts twice his size in a back alley in Greece. Hungover.”

            Iris makes an assenting sound, “But he probably won, didn’t he?”

            “Of course the little idiot did. He had a stick.”

            Irene isn’t quite sure she’s tracking, “A stick?”

            “Gen is a very accomplished fencer and martial artist,” Iris explains, “Our father made us all study multiple combat disciplines when we were young. Gen was, _is_ …gifted.”

            “A pity he hates it so much,” Magnus observes, “But he’d be wasted as a pugilist. His mind is incredible. Even if it is, rather, ah, twisty.”

            Iris and Irene snort in sync, “That’s one way to describe it,” Iris acknowledges.

            In front of them the other team has surrounded Gen, shoving him around and driving him away from the goal like a pack of overenthusiastic dogs trying to herd one particularly obstinate goat. He shoots the puck to Sophos, who nearly stops entirely in surprise when he intercepts it and then slaps it away from himself with enough force to drive it deep into the snowbank beyond the markers delineating the other team’s goal posts.

            “I scored,” Sophos says, as if this is a massive, delightful surprise, “I scored. Hey, Helen, I SCORED.”

            “That’s what he said,” Gen mutters as he blurs past the sidelines and Irene chokes on an entirely inappropriate laugh.

            The game continues, in all it’s blunt, brutal glory, until Irene and company’s hands and feet begin to go numb and Aunt Dia calls from the house, “Emergency grocery run, please!” 

            “Want to come with?” Iris asks just as Uncle Ed bellows “FOUL, NO PICKING UP GEN AND THROWING HIM OUT OF BOUNDS.”

            Irene, after scanning the surrounding snowbanks to make sure Gen’s dark head pops up unscathed, agrees and follows Iris into the house. Gen can fend for himself for a bit.

…

            In the car, en route to the store, Iris glances over at Irene and says, “So, you and Gen, how did that happen?”

            Irene is _this close_ to claiming there is no ‘her and Gen’ there’s just Gen and there’s just her, but…in a sense, Iris is right. She’s gotten so thoroughly entangled in his life and he’s burrowed so deeply into hers, she’s not sure how she could possibly claim there is no version of ‘her and Gen’ somewhere.

            But she’s not the sort of person who muses about these things out loud. Instead she looks out the window and says, “A friend wanted Gen off of his couch. I had a spare room.”

            Iris snorts inelegantly. “Sorry, just, of course Gen ends up in these situations. He’s been a magnet for trouble his whole life.”

            Irene hums her agreement with this sentiment. She may not know all the details of Gen’s youthful exploits, but she can’t imagine a world in which Gen wasn’t causing some sort of trouble.

            “Why did you take him?” she asks, voice serious but not confrontational. Musing, not grave or antagonistic, “Based on what he’s told me, you don’t need a roommate. And Gen’s not…the easiest person to live with.”

            Irene ponders that logic. She supposes some might find Gen grating or inconvenient. And she’s had her share of frustrations and they’ve had their share of spats, but she can’t help but compare her old, empty apartment to the bright, festive pit of chaos it’s turned into.

            She’ll take the pit of chaos.

            “I appreciate his presence,” Irene says simply.

            Iris _beams_ at her, far more brightly than such a stilted, simple statement should have deserved. “Good, that’s good.”

            Irene nods, unsure what just happened, but unwilling to look too confused in front of a near-stranger.

            Iris turns on the radio and the car fills with the sounds of The Nutcracker Suite.

            Irene reflexively winces.

            “Not a fan of the Nutcracker?”

            “I danced as a child. Ballet. Ten years. The Nutcracker is hammered into my bones.”

            Iris chuckles and changes the station, ‘Winter Wonderland’ croons from the speakers. “I did figure skating. Everyone else did hockey. Gen threw a fit over not wanting to go and Cass threw a fit _demanding_ to go and no one was happy.”

            Irene smiles a wistful smile, “I figured skated too. Briefly.”

            “Really?”

            Irene’s smile turns sharp the way her smiles tended to, “The idea of strapping knives to my feet and making something beautiful appealed to me.”

            Iris laughs, a bright surprised sound. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

            They pass the rest of the ride in light conversation and Irene tries not to feel like she had somehow passed a test.

…

            On the drive back, trunk stuffed with bags of last minute odds and ends, Iris breaks what had been a peaceable enough silence, punctuated only with the soft jingle of Christmas carols on the radio, with an unexpected question, “What has Gen told you about our family?”

            Irene thinks of all the things Gen has said about his siblings, his parents, his cousins, and his past. All the meaningless details and the broad strokes in the picture he’d painted of all of them. “He says a lot of things. He’s…” he’s Gen, his mind is twisty as a bendy straw on a good day, he’ll say anything and everything except for the truth. He doesn’t approach anything directly; he avoids things he doesn’t want to deal with like the plague, and throws himself into a series of madcap schemes and works himself nearly to death if he cares enough. He’s a bundle of contradictions and Irene is slowly realizing that no matter how he’s said to her, he hasn’t _told_ her nearly as much as he could. “He’s Gen. He doesn’t…”

            Iris’s lips twist wryly, “He’s never direct about anything.”

            “Indeed.”

            Iris pauses, lips parted, breathes in, presses her lips together, and seems to make a decision. “Cleo was born when I was seventeen years old.”

            Irene’s brows draw together; she’s not sure what to say.

            Luckily, Iris doesn’t seem to notice. “I never expected…I don’t know what I expected. I half thought I’d be out on my ear at sixteen when I decided to keep her. But I underestimated my father’s family loyalty, I suppose. And I underestimated Gen too.”

            “Gen?”

            “He was young, middle school, and he…he was unhappy. He’s the youngest and our mother’s death gutted him. She was always the one who understood him best, who backed him whenever father tried to push him in a direction he didn’t want to go. When she died he…spiraled. He was out of control. He’d shoplift anything that wasn’t nailed down, he picked fights with bullies three times his size every other week, he ran away half a dozen times, our father didn’t know what to do with him. They had a screaming match once a week; it was horrible. But then Cleo was born. And Dad wasn’t happy, but he stood by me, and Gen…he put all that energy of his into helping me with Cleo. He was her babysitter, her confidant, her childhood best friend. He told her all the fabulous stories our Mom told us. That’s why Cleo loves him so much. And that’s why he and Tem don’t get along.”

            “Why?” Irene asks before she can stop herself.

            “Tem feels guilty. He offered to stay, to help me with Cleo after high school. But he always wanted to join the Marines and be just like Dad. I wasn’t going to stop him. I told him to go. Then Gen did all the things Tem thought he _should_ have done. Tem feels guilty for leaving and he resents Gen for, well, being Gen,”

            Irene snorts.

            “- and for stepping up when Tem left. He feels like Gen is rubbing it in his face.”

            “Gen would rub nearly anything in anyone’s face given the chance,” Irene points out wryly, “but not something like that.”

            “No, but Tem doesn’t understand that. And Gen doesn’t understand him,” Iris gestures vaguely, one hand open, palm-up, “And so it goes.”

            Irene shakes her head; “Sometimes I’m glad I don’t communicate with my brother more than once or twice a year.”

            Iris snorts.

            “Why did you tell me all of this?” Irene asks. She’s not really the person who receives confidences from people. Ever. The most touchy-feely conversation she’s had in the last year outside of her heart-to-heart with Gen after the gala was probably when Kamet paid for her breakfast on her birthday and said “I suppose guess we’re friends now or something.”

            “You seem important to Gen. And I wanted you to understand a little bit of,” a vague gesture, “All this Eddisian madness.”

            Irene doesn’t know what to say in this situation so she just says, “Thank you for trusting me.” The words sit strangely in her mouth and settle heavy on her stomach. People don’t generally trust Irene Attolia. Probably because she doesn’t generally trust people. You have to give something to get it in return.

            “Thank you for caring about Gen,” Iris says, and turns up the radio.

…

            They return home to a cacophony in the kitchen. The hockey players have trooped back inside and are demolishing a spread of sandwiches and sides in the kitchen while Aunt Dia marshals the troops to pre-make as much of the Christmas feast as possible pre-Christmas. The hockey teams, now off the ice, have devolved into back-slapping and rehashing the game as they congratulate each other on particularly memorable plays.  Irene’s eyes catch on Cleo, standing at Gen’s elbow, laughing as he bestows a crown made of napkin flowers on her head. The rest of the youthful mob harass the ‘more thugly’ Eddisians (as Gen would say), praising their hockey skills and demanding to be included next year. And in the corner, chatting with Uncle Ed, is a newcomer Irene doesn’t immediately recognize but who could only be The General, Gen’s father.

            His dark eyes sweep over the gathered masses of his family like a man inspecting the troops after a long battle, making sure everyone in one piece. Temenus had clearly inherited his father’s height and breadth – the General towers over his gathered family like a monument, his posture perfect, his shoulders strong despite his age. The only features to betray his years are the threads of sliver and gray in what must have once been hair just as dark as Gen’s – and still as thick, Irene observes, and the fine lines fanning out from around his eyes and mouth. His bronze skin is weathered and tough, but not sagging or leathery yet, but a sharp line between thick, dark eyebrows betrays a lifetime of squinting into the sun and frowning at what he sees.

            Of course Gen spots them first. “IRENE! Did you bring me something nice? Is it a cookie? Does it have sparkles? Does it sing?”

            “Dear god, I hope there isn’t a cookie on the planet that lights up and sings,” Helen mutters under her breath while Sophos wears the vaguely horrified look of someone imagining what that would look like.

            “No cookies for you,” Irene answers first, lightly bopping Gen on the head with one of her shopping bags.

            “And stop taking the lettuce off your sandwich and sneaking it onto Sten’s when he isn’t looking,” Iris says, tugging on the short, messy ponytail Gen has pulled his hair into.  Sweat sticks strands of black hair to his flushed brown cheeks and his dark eyes sparkle with warmth and mischief.

            Sten, looking profoundly offended, eyes his sandwich suspiciously before setting it down and peeling off the top layer of bread to behold the heap of greens underneath.

            “Costis never treated me like this,” Gen grumbles into his lettuce-less sandwich.

            “Costis picked you up and threw you in a snowdrift five days ago,” Irene reminds him.

            “Yeah, but he’d buy me a cookie.”

            “Maybe if you were stabbed.”

            “If I was stabbed he’d better bring me more than a goddamn cookie,” Gen grumps.

            “LANGUAGE,” Aunt Dia barks from the kitchen and Cleo cackles.

            “Eugenides,” The General says, voice a neutral growl.

            “Fine, fine, manners, I guess,” Gen waves a dismissive hand above his head, “Father, my roommate, Irene. Irene, my father.”

            “Hello,” Irene says, shooting a brief glare Gen’s way as she sets her bags down on the kitchen island before allowing her neutral polite company expression to take over her face, “I’m Dr. Irene Attolia.”

            The General gives her a hard look, like he’s assessing something in her and he hasn’t made any definitive conclusions yet, before taking her hand and giving it a brief shake. “Nice to meet you.”

            It doesn’t so much ring false as fall flat, like he hasn’t quite decided if it’s nice to meet her yet but knows it’s what he’s supposed to say in this situation. She shakes his hand because she’s familiar with this kind of script. She knows the steps to this dance.

            His grip is firm and his hands large and scarred but hers fingers are strong from years of delicate surgery and ever since she escaped her father’s house she’s been sure her handshake is firm enough to make bones creak.

            Irene’s height puts the top of her head somewhere near his nose, where the average woman would probably be utterly dwarfed by him. She meets his dark eyes with her own cool gaze and they shake once, taking each other’s measure.

            The moment breaks quickly, of course, and the afternoon fragments into the happy, bustling chaos Irene is beginning to associate with an Eddisian Christmas. She catches Gen’s eyes after her handshake with the General, though, and she has to notice that Gen has his father’s eyes, but none of the hardness and distance.

…

            Dinner is meatloaf, which Irene generally dislikes, but Gen is entirely willing to sneak off her plate if she eats his collard greens. She leaves the food-swapping up to Gen, he’s subtle enough to do it without offending anyone, and devotes herself to quietly absorbing the friendly chatter around the table. It’s generally decided that Helen is the hockey MVP and Gen and Sten are tied for ‘not as sucky as they could have been’, a title which Gen accepts with a great deal of posturing and flourishing. Irene and Iris trade looks at that and Irene has a strange feeling that she may have made a friend.

            After dinner is the washing up, which is accomplished with a great deal of soap suds and an excess of splashing. Then the whole family piles into the living room, where ‘Elf’ plays on the big screen tv. Once the youngest children doze off and are carted off to bed the adults turn on ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’, with Cleo bouncing proudly on the couch next to her mother at the thought of finally getting to see a ‘grownup’ movie with the adults.

            Irene sits on the floor with Gen again, idly texting Kamet as pratfalls play on the screen.

            “How’s Kamet coping with the Ortemides clan?” Gen asks, propping his chin on her shoulder and trying to peer at her conversation.

            “They’re surviving,” Irene tires to shrug him off half-heartedly, which only prompts Gen to snuggle in closer. He’s wearing a grey shirt with a checklist down the front reading “Naughty…Nice…I tried” with a big check next to ‘I tried’.

            “Ask Kamet if Costis is wearing the shirt I gave him.” Gen asks.

            Irene had seen that shirt. It was bright green with a suggestive candy cane on it and read ‘it’s not going to lick itself’. Kamet had one reading ‘Jingle Jingle Bitches’ with a vaguely lewd arrangement of jingle bells and ribbons beside the words.

            After a moment Irene says, “Kamet’s wearing his. Costis wants you to know he’s wearing his from last year.”

            Gen _cackles_ , then whispers, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” 

            A moment later and Irene’s phone chirps with a photo of Kamet and Costis squished together, Kamet wearing his frankly heinous shirt, and Costis smiling tiredly, attired in… Irene chokes, “What the _fuck_ ” she hisses to Gen under her breath as he wheezes with silent laughter.

            Costis is wearing a sweatshirt printed to look like he’s wearing a cartoonish Santa suit…that’s front has been pulled open to reveal equally cartoonish pecs and abs.

            He has an arm thrown over Kamet’s shoulders, his cheek resting on Kamet’s head, hair disheveled and eyes twinkling.

            Gen elbows her in the ribs, “Don’t _swear_ , dear.”

            “Shut up, _darling_ , they look absurd,” Irene murmurs and Gen bursts into hysterical giggles again. Penny kicks him in the shoulder, muttering _“Shut **up** ,” _which only makes Gen and Irene laugh harder until half the family is staring at them with puzzled expressions on their faces.

            It’s a good night.

…

            Irene dreams of skating that night. She dreams of frost biting at her cheeks and the shush-shush-shush of blades on ice, cutting through the world, spinning, spinning, spinning into an infinity of snowflakes and stars.

            She wakes in darkness, the only light the soft glow of the banked fire in the grate. She rises, as if in a dream, and wraps herself in layers of soft, stretching clothes and wanders to the back door. The house is still and silent as houses tend to be after two in the morning.

            She finds the skates Iris left out by the door – the figure skates the other woman offered her that afternoon – “If you ever want to relive past glories,” she’d said with a wry sort of smile.

            She laces them up and wears them out, taking the guards off when she reaches the ice and steps out on the smooth, cool surface. Her first strokes wobble slightly but she soon regains the rhythm.

            She flies across the ice, carving ribbons in her wake, dancing patterns into the world. Snow dusts the ice and flakes catch in her eyelashes, silver catching in her hair. She tries a short spin, just to see if she can and it works, it works and she’s flying, really flying. She jumps, she spins, she teeters on the landing and her fingers skim the ice. She’ll never win the Olympics but she’s fire on the ice and for a long, strange, perfect moment her soul is quiet, quiet, quiet. She is nothing but blades carving a memory into the ice and she is the peace her name is supposed to mean.

            And then she turns and Gen is there. He’s standing at the edge of the ice and he’s wearing skates.  He reaches out and as if in a dream she grasps his hands and lets him follow her onto the ice.

            His steps match hers and they’re dancing, their hands the only bridge between their bodies. Their breath, silvery fog, twining together with the rhythm of their blades. They’re slow and steady, silver figures on a moonlit night, snowflakes like stars dusting their hair, their skin, their coats and gloves.

            They dance for minutes or for hours and when they part its with a whisper of silence as their gloved fingers slide free of each other. They return to their rooms together and change into their pajamas alone, curling up in soft sheets and dreaming of snow.

            Irene falls asleep thinking of the soft light in Gen’s eyes and the strength in his hands as he held hers.  

**Author's Note:**

> YOU MADE IT THIS FAR???? WOW, DID NOT SEE THAT COMING. 
> 
> If you liked this, if you want to see more of it, PLEASE REVIEW. I write only if the inspiration goblin is fed. :) 
> 
> Fic title from 'Archers' by the Ballroom Thieves, which is amazingly perfect for Gen/Irene.


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